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THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

AND  OTHER  SERMONS 


BY 


JOSEPH  FORT  NEWTON,  D.D. 

Minister  of  the  City  Temple,  London 


THE  MURRAY  PRESS 

BOSTON  AND  CHICAGO 

1917 


Copyright,  1917,  by 
Universalist  Publishing  House 


VAIL-BALLOU    COMPANY 

■  INaMAMTON  AND  MEW  TOKR 


PUBLISHERS'  FOREWORD 

This  volume  owes  its  existence  to  the  belief 
that  Joseph  Fort  Newton  is  one  of  the  few  living 
preachers  who  have  a  universal  message.  He 
lives  beyond  dogma  and  above  controversy,  com- 
panioned by  Him,  "  whose  we  are,  in  whom  we 
live,  and  in  the  service  of  whose  wise  will  there 
is  peace." 

Because  this  book  is  a  witness  of  The  Unseen, 
its  message  is  to  all  who  seek  where  they  do  not 
yet  see. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I  The  Mercy  of  Hell 

II  The  Eternal  Religion 

III  The  First  Truth 

IV  The  Hidden  God  . 
V  With  All  Thy  Heart 

VI  The  Lamp  of  Fellowship   . 

VII  The  Beloved  Community     . 

VIII  The  Authority  of  Jesus     . 

IX  Christ  All  and  in  All   . 

X  Another  Christ  .... 

XI  The  Master  Book 

XII  The  Supremacy  of  the  Bible 

XIII  All  Souls  and  All  Saints   . 

XIV  The  Great  Confidence  . 
XV  The  Vision  of  the  Dead    . 


PAGE 
I 

13 

25 

37 
49 
59 
71 
81 

93 
103 

115 
127 

143 

155 
167 


THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 
"  And  in  hcU  he  lifted  up  his  eyes." —  Luke  i6 :  23. 

SO  terrible  a  theme  casts  over  one  the  hush 
of  a  great  awe.  Too  often  those  who  dis- 
cuss it  do  so  as  advocates  of  this  side  or 
that,  keen  to  make  out  their  case.  Whereas  it  is 
too  solemn  and  fearful  to  be  used  for  dogma,  much 
less  as  a  ready  expedient  to  terrify,  and  still  less 
to  drive  away  those  whom  the  preacher  has  not 
the  skill,  the  patience,  the  sympathy  to  win.  Let 
all  such  thoughts  be  far  from  us  to-day,  as  we 
seek  to  inquire  into  the  issues  of  the  moral  life. 
Strangely  enough  this  theme,  once  so  popular, 
has  almost  vanished  from  the  pulpit.  So  much 
so  that  it  is  seldom  named.  The  place  where  the 
reality  of  hell  is  preached  most  vividly  to-day  is 
in  the  hall  of  science,  with  its  vision  of  inexorable 
law.  Outside  that  temple,  the  man  in  our  day 
who  has  taught  it  with  most  terrible  intensity  of 
insight,  making  men  view  with  uncovered  eyes  the 
uncovered  horror,  is  Henrik  Ibsen.  It  is  startling 
to  pass  from  the  theology  of  our  day,  often  only 

a    confection    of    rose-water    sentiment  —  not    to 

1 


THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 


name  the  current  denial  of  the  reaHty  of  sin  — 
into  the  air  of  the  Ibsen  stage.  There  we  are 
made  to  behold  the  facts  of  the  moral  life  in  the 
light  of  a  profound  and  authentic  insight,  and 
without  disguise. 

Such  teaching  seems  unduly  severe  to  our  easy- 
going and  indulgent  age,  not  a  little  given  to  flip- 
pant talk  about  the  most  serious  things.  Many 
think  that  with  the  passing  of  the  crude  idea  of 
literal  fire  burning  unburnable  spirits,  hell  has 
been  done  away  with.  Not  so.  As  a  fact,  hell, 
in  the  sense  of  inevitable  and  unmistakable  pun- 
ishment for  sin,  or  rather  by  sin,  is  to-day  more  a 
reality  than  ever  before.  Whatever  may  be  the 
sufferings  through  which  men  must  go  in  the  fu- 
ture, there  is  no  question  about  the  sufferings  we 
undergo  in  this  present  life.  That  man  was  right 
who,  when  asked  if  he  believed  in  hell,  replied: 
"  No,  I  do  not  believe  in  it,  I  know  it,  because  I 
am  in  it."  This  awful  reality  has  been  put  off  into 
the  dim  future,  whereas,  like  heaven,  it  begins  on 
earth  and  goes  with  us  into  the  beyond. 

To-day  the  fact  of  hell  gets  its  most  tragic  as- 
pect from  the  truth  that  men  who  are  in  it  are 
often  unconscious  that  they  are  in  a  place  of  tor- 
ment. Sad  beyond  tears  is  the  sight  of  moral  de- 
cay, the  deadening  of  moral  sensibilities,  and 
blinding  of  moral  vision,  and  the  slow  degradation 
of  soul  into  which,  imperceptibly,  men  sink.  It  is 
this  inward  hell  which  each  man  makes  for  him- 


THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 


self  that  is  so  terrible.  Men  go  to  hell,  not  be- 
cause they  are  sent  there  by  divine  fiat,  but  because 
they  choose  to  go.  They  go  by  a  law  of  their  own 
natures,  as  surely  as  harvest  follows  sowing,  as 
certainly  as  night  follows  day.  It  does  not  lie 
beyond  the  open  doors  of  death ;  it  is  here.  It  be- 
gins the  moment  a  man  sins  and  continues  as  long 
as  he  is  in  sin,  here  or  otherwhere.  To  be  in  hell 
and  not  know  it,  happy  and  contented  there  —  that 
is  the  ultimate  moral  tragedy. 

Fear  of  hell  is  one  of  the  great  influences  under 
which  man  has  been  educated,  and  it  is  rooted  in 
his  primary  moral  instincts.  Consider  the  facts. 
We  have,  as  psychology  discloses,  an  infallible 
memory  below  the  surface  of  the  mind,  keeping 
record  of  all  that  we  have  thought,  dreamed,  said, 
and  done.  We  have  also  a  moral  judgment  relent- 
less in  its  accuracy  and  insight.  We  have,  besides, 
a  developing  nature.  Given  these  three  things, 
and  nothing  else  is  needed  to  make  a  hell  more 
terrible  than  Dante  dreamed  in  his  darkest  mood. 
Once  there  is  an  awakening,  and  the  thoughts  and 
acts  of  days  agone  rise  up  like  the  citizens  of  a 
sleeping  city.  Then  a  man  sees  his  brutality  set 
in  the  light,  remembers  every  look  of  pain,  every 
tear  he  has  caused,  all  the  tragedy  and  sorrow 
which  he  failed  to  notice  before.  As  in  a  drama, 
which  he  must  sit  and  see  out,  he  beholds  the  shame 
of  his  life  in  the  light  of  what  he  might  have  been! 
What  cycle  of  the  Inferno  could  be  more  terrify- 


THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 


ing  than  to  witness  that  tragedy  pass  and  repass! 

Such  an  awakening  is  sure  to  come  at  last,  if 
not  here,  then  beyond.  Some  pass  through  this 
life  like  the  rich  man  in  the  parable,  thoughtless 
and  indifferent,  carelessly  taking  toll  of  unresisting 
love,  inflicting  suffering,  perpetuating  injustice; 
but  those  things  all  come  back  to  them  in  the  end. 
During  his  lifetime  the  rich  man  did  not  see  the 
beggar  at  his  gate,  covered  with  sores  and  attended 
by  dogs ;  but  in  hell  he  lifted  up  his  eyes,  and  then 
he  could  see  Lazarus  afar  off.  His  eyes  were 
opened  at  last.  Too  late  he  saw  how  brutal,  self- 
ish, and  unfeeling  he  had  been  to  a  fellow  man 
in  dire  plight.  No  wonder  he  was  in  torment, 
and  in  his  misery  he  became  a  beggar,  asking 
mercy  of  one  for  whom  he  had  no  mercy  in  life. 
This  is  hell  —  not  the  painted  flame  that  flickers 
in  the  evasive  talk  of  our  time,  but  the  very  thing 
itself. 

Unhappily,  this  awful  hell,  real  and  terrible  be- 
yond all  words,  has  too  often  been  made,  not  simply 
salutary  in  its  warning  and  effects,  but  almost  sav- 
age, by  three  frightful  errors.  First,  it  has  been 
portrayed  in  lurid  rhetoric  as  a  punishment  in- 
flicted by  God  in  anger,  and  sometimes  almost  in  a 
glee  of  vengeance.  So  blasphemous  an  idea  of 
God,  instead  of  serving  the  purpose  intended, 
often  made  Him  whom  men  should  love  and  serve 
a  Being  whom  it  were  an  act  of  worship  to  despise. 
Volumes  could  not  tell  the  injury  done  to  religion 


THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 


by  such  a  caricature  of  the  Infinite  Father  revealed 
in  the  Hfe  of  One  who  was  love  and  mercy,  who 
forgave  the  vilest  sinner  when  he  gave  up  his  evil 
way  and  turned  to  the  light.  As  a  method  of 
making  not  simply  agnostics,  but  ribald  atheists, 
no  better  plan  was  ever  devised. 

In  the  life  of  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  we  read 
of  an  evening,  after  the  second  marriage  of  her 
father,  when  the  family  sat  about  the  fire  reading. 
The  book  was  a  volume  of  the  works  of  Jonathan 
Edwards,  and  it  happened  to  be  the  famous  ser- 
mon with  the  pungent  title,  "  Sinners  in  the  Hands 
of  an  Angry  God."  Harriet  was  curled  up  on  the 
sofa,  apparently  listening,  but  really  watching  the 
face  of  her  new  mother.  She  saw  an  expression 
of  horror  and  abhorrence  on  her  face  —  a  bright 
red  spot  every  moment  growing  redder.  Finally, 
rising  to  her  stately  height,  the  good  woman  swept 
out  of  the  room,  saying  as  she  went : 

"  Mr.  Beecher,  I  will  not  listen  to  another  word ! 
Why,  it  is  horrible!  It  is  a  slander  on  the  char- 
acter of  my  Heavenly  Father!  I  will  not  hear 
it!" 

Never  did  Harriet  forget  that  scene,  and  the 
expression  of  stupefaction  on  the  face  of  her 
father,  A  boy  named  Henry  was  also  listening, 
and  in  his  after  years  he  toiled  nobly  to  erase  from 
the  minds  of  men  that  ghastly  dogma.  Yet  Ed- 
wards was  a  noble  and  gracious  man,  by  far  the 
greatest  thinker  this  land  has  known,  and  nothing 


THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 


was  further  from  his  thought  than  to  mar  faith, 
much  less  becloud  it.  He  was  better  than  his 
theology,  more  merciful  than  the  God  whom  he 
portrayed  as  an  avenging  fury  torturing  those 
whom  He  was  unable  to  win.  God  is  indeed  a 
consuming  fire,  but  if  He  be  God  at  all  it  is  a  fire 
of  Love,  not  only  pure,  but  purifying  in  its  pur- 
pose and  power. 

Hence  the  second  blunder  of  thinking  of  the 
punishment  of  hell  as  heartless,  hopeless,  and  ever- 
lasting. Our  faith  in  the  sovereignty  of  Infinite 
Love  rises  up  against  anything  hopeless  in  a  world 
God-made  and  ruled.  As  for  the  word  Eternal, 
the  Bible  nowhere  uses  it  as  we  use  it  —  in  the 
sense  of  extending  time  into  eternity.  By  eternal 
it  means,  negatively,  out  of  time  relations  alto- 
gether; positively,  the  spiritual  world.  That  is, 
that  the  laws  of  the  moral  life  hold  true  in  the 
unseen  world  as  they  do  here.  Does  sin  persist  in 
the  unseen  world?  Manifestly,  since  there  is  no 
magic  in  death  to  make  a  soul  pure,  nor  any 
finality,  so  far  as  we  can  think,  to  check  its  growth 
or  decay.  In  this  sense  hell  is  eternal,  for  sin  is 
hell.  But  that  it  is  eternal  in  the  sense  that  it  is 
to  endure  forever,  some  of  us  cannot  admit  —  for 
that  would  mean  ultimate  Divine  defeat. 

And  the  third  error,  logically  deduced  from  the 
other  two,  was  the  idea  that  the  chief  concern  of 
religion  is  to  help  us  escape  from  hell.  Try  to 
think  of  what  that  means.     Could  the  life  of  faith 


THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 


and  prayer,  of  vision  and  service,  suffer  a  per- 
version more  sad?  No  wonder  Santa  Teresa 
prayed  for  a  cup  of  water  in  one  hand  and  a 
torch  in  the  other,  that  with  the  one  she  might 
quench  the  fires  of  hell  and  with  the  other  burn  up 
the  glories  of  heaven  —  so  that  men  might  learn 
to  love  God  for  His  loveliness,  and  to  do  right  for 
the  sake  of  right.  Carlyle  said  that  the  men  of 
his  day  seemed  moved  by  the  selfish,  sordid  desire 
to  save  their  own  tiny  little  souls,  and  nothing 
else.  Think  of  reducing  religion  to  such  a 
scramble  for  safety!  Was  it  for  this  that  the 
saints  lived  their  heroic  and  dedicated  lives? 

Against  such  errors,  so  sadly  degrading,  some 
of  us  will  never  cease  to  protest.  Rather  do  we 
take  company  with  the  prophets  of  the  Larger 
Hope,  with  men  like  Origen,  Bengel,  Butler,  Law, 
Rothe,  Neander,  Tholuck,  Maurice,  Kingsley, 
Erskine,  and  Farrar,  to  name  but  a  few  —  teach- 
ers of  the  Hope  in  which  Wesley  died,  and  which 
Lord  Tennyson  set  to  music.  They  were  men  of 
noble  character,  of  deep  learning,  of  blameless 
loyalty  to  the  Bible.  They  did  not  think  lightly 
of  sin  or  its  results.  They  set  no  dates.  But 
they  did  hold  to  the  law  of  retribution  as  a  law  of 
love,  intended  to  redeem.  They  did  hold  that  God 
is  greater  than  man,  and  that  His  love  hath  in 
it  the  secret  of  unknown  redemptions.  They 
dared  to  trust  that  Love  can  never  lose  its  own, 
that 


THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 


"  Nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet, 

And  not  one  life  shall  be  destroyed, 
Or  cast  as   rubbish  in  the  void, 
When  God  hath  made  the  pile  complete." 

Is  there  any  sense  in  which  hell  is  eternal? 
Yes.  Sin  means  loss,  eternal  loss.  There  is  no 
making  up  the  arrears  of  duty.  That  opportunity 
we  missed  has  gone  forever,  and  with  it  the  en- 
richment which  it  might  have  brought.  The 
Greek  poet  was  right  when  he  said  "  the  one  thing 
which  the  gods  cannot  do  is  to  make  what  has  been 
done  not  have  been  done."  To  all  eternity  we 
shall  be  poorer  for  the  wrong  we  have  done,  and 
the  good  we  have  failed  to  do.  That  is  what 
George  Macdonald  meant  when  he  asked :  "  Will 
not  heaven  be  an  eternal  repentance?  "  Jesus  has 
bidden  us  to  be  laying  up  treasures  in  heaven;  by 
which  He  meant  that  every  man  will  start  on  the 
other  side  with  the  moral  capital  which  he  is  now 
earning.  The  best  men  will  have  less  than  they 
might  have  had ;  and  some  of  us  —  perhaps  those 
who  least  think  it  —  will  find  ourselves  bankrupt. 
This  is  hell  —  a  squandered  heart,  an  unspiritual 
mind,  a  poisoned  memory,  an  impotent  will ! 

There  is  one  aspect  of  this  matter  from  which 
one  can  hardly  bear  to  lift  the  veil.  It  is  so  hor- 
rible. It  is  what  Shakespeare  described  as  "  cap- 
tive Good  attending  captain  111," — the  reactionary 
influence  of  a  cherished  sin  upon  the  memory  of 
the  good  we  have  done.     Only  to  think  that  our 


THE  MERCY  OF  HELL  ,  9 

fairest  deeds  may  come  to  be  remembered  as  some- 
thing which,  if  we  could,  we  would  blot  out! 
Thank  God  there  are  those  fallen  low  who  can 
still  say :  "  My  good  was  good.  No  man,  nor 
God,  shall  rob  me  of  this  confidence."  But  for 
many  hell  has  no  keener  pang  than  the  blasted 
recollection  of  good  deeds  done.  What  is  the 
sorriest  thing  that  enters  hell?  asks  Rossetti,  and 
answers  his  own  question : 

"  None  of  the  sins,  but  this  and  that  fair  deed, 
Which  a  soul's   sin  at  length  can  supersede." 

If  only  youth  would  think,  and  not  play  with 
fire!  Here  is  a  Buddhist  parable  to  the  point: 
There  was  a  man  who  had  done  evil  with  his  body, 
his  mind,  his  voice,  and  the  guardians  of  hell 
bring  him  before  the  king  of  the  dead,  who  ques- 
tions him  as  follows: 

"  O  man,  did  you  not  see  the  first  messenger  of 
warning  appear  visibly  among  men  ?  Did  you  not 
see  an  old  man,  decrepit,  bowed,  white  of  hair, 
trembling,  tottering?" 

"  Lord,  I  did;  but  I  did  not  think,"  replied  the 
man. 

"  O  man,  did  you  not  see  the  second  messenger 
of  warning?  Did  you  not  see  a  man  diseased, 
suffering,  grievously  sick,  rolling  in  his  pain,  who, 
when  lying  down,  had  to  be  lifted  by  others?  " 

"  Lord,  I  did,  but  I  did  not  think,"  replied  the 
man. 


10  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

"  O  man,  did  you  not  see  the  third  messenger 
of  warning?  Did  you  not  see  a  man  that  had 
been  three  days  dead,  and  had  become  swollen  and 
black?" 

"  Lord,  I  did,  but  I  did  not  think,"  replied  the 
man. 

"  O  man,  did  it  not  occur  to  you,  being  a  person 
of  mature  mind  and  years:  'I  also  am  subject  to 
age,  sickness,  and  death,  and  am  in  no  way  ex- 
empt. Come  now!  I  will  act  nobly  with  body, 
mind,  and  voice  '  ?  " 

"  Lord,  I  did  not  think,"  the  man  replied. 

"  O  man,  through  thoughtlessness  you  have 
failed  to  act  nobly.  Verily,  O  man,  it  shall  be 
done  unto  you  according  to  your  thoughtlessness. 
It  was  not  your  mother  who  did  this  wickedness, 
nor  your  father,  nor  your  relative,  nor  the  deities ; 
it  was  you  yourself.  Thou  shalt  have  time  to 
think  in  hell." 

The  mercy  of  hell !  Surely  Dante  had  a  far-off 
glimpse  of  it  when  he  saw  these  words  written 
over  the  gate  of  the  Inferno :  **  Justice  moved  my 
great  Creator;  divine  omnipotence,  highest  wis- 
dom and  primal  love  made  me."  Some  such  hell 
is  not  only  merciful,  but  the  final  hope  of  man. 
Were  it  otherwise,  were  we  permitted  to  go  on  in 
sin  unrestrained,  unrebuked,  untortured,  there 
would  be  no  hope  at  all.  That  would  be  a  Divine 
indifference  most  to  be  feared,  if  we  had  care 
enough  to  fear.     No,  God  in  His  great  love  has 


THE  MERCY  OF  HELL  11 


not  left  us  to  ourselves,  else  we  had  wandered  far. 
He  has  made  the  way  to  ruin  rough,  and  rougher 
still  the  further  we  go,  until  we  can  go  no  further. 
'Tis  a  mercy  that  it  is  so. 

The  mercy  of  hell !  Instead  of  being  heartless 
and  hopeless,  hell  is  a  part  of  the  way  to  salvation. 
So  much  is  this  true  that  it  may  almost  be  said 
that  no  one  attains  to  saintliness  who  does  not  go 
through  hell  to  win  it.  Not  Dante  himself  ever 
wrote  pages  more  vivid  than  those  of  the  saints 
describing  the  path  of  pain  they  walked  to  the 
mount  of  vision.  And  surely  no  soul  in  the 
depths  of  hell  ever  felt  keener  woe  than  did  that 
lone  Sufiferer  on  the  Cross.  Of  a  truth  "He 
descended  into  hell,"  leading  captivity  captive  and 
giving  hope  to  men.  He  who  is  at  once  a  con- 
suming fire  and  the  love  that  passeth  knowledge, 
will  never  let  us  go.  Love  never  f aileth  —  for 
God  is  love. 

The  mercy  of  hell!  Here  is  the  vengeance  of 
God  —  that  He  will  never  leave  us  to  ourselves. 
What  makes  our  hell  is  that  we  are  trying  to  es- 
cape from  that  pressing  hand,  that  following 
presence.  Faith  can  find  no  perfect  rest  save  in 
an  inescapable,  inexorable  Love  whose  purpose 
nothing  can  turn  aside.  Only  on  a  Love  which 
will  not  fail  of  its  end  for  any  trouble  to  itself  or 
for  any  suffering  to  us,  can  we  rely.  Higher  than 
heaven  is  the  power  of  God,  deeper  than  hell  is 
His  Love! 


II 

THE  ETERNAL  RELIGION 

"What  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee,  but  to  do  justly, 
and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy  God  ?  " 
—  Micah  6 : 8. 

"  Pure  religion  and  undefiled  before  God  and  the  Father, 
is  this.  To  visit  the  fatherless  and  widows  in  their  afflic- 
tion, and  to  keep  himself  unspotted  from  the  world." — 
James  i :  27. 

THERE  is  much  mystery,  not  to  say  mysti- 
fication, about  religion,  but  there  is  not 
much  mystery  in  religion  —  save  the 
mystery  of  all  the  great  and  simple  things  that 
make  it  worth  our  time  to  live.  Religion,  when 
we  get  to  the  essence  of  it,  is  very  simple  —  how 
simple,  some  of  us  have  never  dreamed.  There  is 
a  philosophy  of  religion,  at  times  more  voluminous 
than  luminous,  and  it  is  valuable;  but  it  is  not 
indispensable.  We  do  not  have  to  know  the 
chemistry  of  cooking  to  enjoy  a  good  meal,  or  to 
endure  a  poor  one.  No  more  do  we  have  to 
fathom  the  intricacies  of  theology  in  order  to  be 
religious  in  heart  and  life. 

These  two  texts,  familiar  but  forever  memor- 
able, tell  us  what  religion  is  in  its  simplest  motive 

13 


14  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

and  manifestation.  It  is  not  this  dogma  or  that 
rite,  but  justice,  mercy,  humihty,  and  fellowship 
with  God  whose  Presence  inspires  and  hallows  our 
mortal  life.  It  is  benevolence  and  purity  in  the 
sight  of  God  —  visiting  those  in  need  and  keeping 
ourselves  pure  in  the  light  of  Eternity.  Philan- 
thropy, without  faith,  is  feverish  and  fragile. 
Fraternity  quickly  evaporates  unless  it  has  the 
inspiration  and  consecration  of  the  Unseen.  Acts 
must  have  motives.  Results  require  causes.  We 
cannot  produce  a  poem  by  an  explosion  in  a  type 
foundry.  Nor  can  we  have  an  abiding  fraternity 
among  men,  much  less  a  noble  and  fruitful  social 
order,  without  a  subduing  and  exalting  sense  of  a 
Divine  Presence  —  a  vast  and  benign  background 
to  life  whence  our  motives  and  acts  derive  their 
dignity,  meaning,  and  worth. 

There  is  one  religion  in  the  world,  and  one  only ; 
one  faith  and  only  one.  Religions  are  many, 
sometimes  sublime,  sometimes  grotesque,  some- 
times even  terrible.  But  Religion  is  one  —  per- 
haps we  may  say  one  thing,  but  that  One  Thing 
includes  everything  —  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul 
of  man  which  finds  expression  in  all  the  shapes 
which  life  and  love  and  duty  take.  Its  forms 
may  be  myriad,  but  the  spirit  that  informs  all  of 
them  is  the  same.  The  church  has  no  monopoly 
of  religion,  nor  did  the  Bible  create  it.  Instead,  it 
was  religion  —  the  natural  and  simple  trust  of  the 
soul  in  a  Power  above  it  and  within  it,  and  the 


THE  ETERNAL  RELIGION  15 

quest  of  a  right  relation  to  that  Power  —  that 
created  the  Bible  and  the  church.  The  soul  of 
man  is  greater  than  all  books,  deeper  than  all 
dogmas,  and  older  than  all  institutions.  Religion 
is  universal,  and  is  as  natural  to  man  as  song  to 
a  bird  or  color  to  a  flower. 

Human  life  rests  upon  one  mighty  faith  —  the 
goodness  of  God,  call  Him  what  you  will,  and  the 
confidence  that  man  may  place  in  Him  for  life 
and  for  death.  Theologies  are  the  reasonings, 
theories,  conjectures,  systems,  and  traditions  that 
have  gathered  about  this  confidence,  often  making 
it  clear,  sometimes  making  it  obscure.  There  is 
no  such  thing  as  an  atheist  in  the  absolute  sense. 
What  we  call  atheism  is  seldom  more  than  a  re- 
vulsion from  an  unworthy  notion  of  God;  often 
it  is  the  dark  side  of  a  loftier  faith.  He  who  has 
a  higher  conception  of  God  than  those  about  him, 
and  who  denies  that  their  conception  is  God,  is 
nearly  always  called  an  atheist  by  men  who  are 
far  less  believers  in  God  than  he.  Socrates  was 
accounted  an  atheist  and  accordingly  put  to  death. 
The  early  Christians,  who  said  the  pagan  idols 
were  not  Gods,  were  called  atheists  and  suffered 
a  like  fate.  Not  all  those  who  wear  the  name 
atheist  have  a  nobler  vision  of  God,  but  even  in 
the  wildest  revolt, 

"  Day  by  day,  unconsciously, 
Men  live  by  a  faith  the  lips  deny, 
God  knoweth  why." 


16  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

By  the  same  token,  not  every  man  who  says 
Lord,  Lord!  is  godlike  in  his  mind  and  spirit. 
One  may  believe  all  the  creeds  of  all  the  sects  and 
yet  be  hard  of  heart  and  vile  of  life.  One  may 
deny  every  dogma  of  every  sect  and  yet  do  justly, 
love  mercy,  and  walk  humbly  with  God.  Nor  is 
religion  certain  things  to  be  done.  No,  it  is  a 
spirit  in  which  we  are  to  do  everything,  even  the 
giving  of  a  cup  of  cold  water. 

"  He  who  sweeps  a  room  as  for  Thy  will, 
Makes  that  and  the  action  fine," 

and  his  humble  labor  has  the  sanctity  of  a  sacra- 
ment. One  may  preach  a  sermon  in  an  irreligious 
spirit,  and  another  may  plow  a  field  in  a  mood 
akin  to  prayer.  Many  kinds  of  life  must  be  lived, 
and  no  one  kind  has  a  right  to  arrogate  to  itself 
the  name  religious.  Religion  and  life  are  one,  or 
neither  is  anything  of  worth. 

That  is  to  say,  religion  is  another  name  for 
mysticism,  and  every  man  is  at  heart  a  mystic. 
The  difference  between  any  one  of  us  and  Francis 
of  Assisi  is  only  a  difference  of  genius  and  spirit- 
ual culture  —  the  difference  between  a  boy  whist- 
ling a  tune  and  Beethoven  writing  a  sonata.  Both 
are  musicians,  one  a  master,  the  other  an  amateur. 
Nevertheless,  we  love  St.  Francis  because  we  have 
within  us,  potentially  at  least,  the  possibility  of 
vision  and  of  victory  revealed  in  him.  What  was 
the  faith  of  St.  Francis  and  the  secret  of  his  power 


THE  ETERNAL  RELIGION  17 

and  joy?  Like  every  great  mystic  he  was  led  by 
one  vision,  made  one  passionate  affirmation  — 
that  unity  underlies  all  diversity.  This  was  the 
basis  and  goal  of  his  life,  a  sense  of  oneness,  of 
the  kinship  of  things,  never  better  stated  than  by 
Krishna  in  the  Hindu  poem: 

"There   is   true   knowledge.    It   is   this: 
To  see  one  changeless  life  in  all, 
In  the  separate,  One  Inseparable." 

Naturally  this  belief  in  the  unity  of  things  leads 
to  the  further  faith  that  while  forms  are  fleeting, 
the  spirit  endures;  that  the  ideal  is  the  ultimate 
real.  Also,  if  this  is  a  universe,  if  unity  lies  at 
the  root  of  things,  then  man  must  have  some  share 
of  the  nature  of  God.  Upon  this  fact  of  the  kin- 
ship of  man  with  God  all  our  thinking,  whether  in 
science,  philosophy,  or  religion,  rests  for  its 
validity.  Here  is  the  fact  which  underlies  every 
form  of  religion,  and  is  the  basis  of  each.  If  it 
be  false  or  unstable,  not  only  religion,  but  all  hu- 
man thought,  is  a  fiction  and  we  know  not  any- 
thing —  nor  can  we  ever  learn.  Since  man  is 
akin  to  God,  he  is  capable  of  knowing  God  through 
what  is  godlike  in  his  nature,  that  is,  through  his 
soul.  Such  is  the  unshakable  reality  upon  which 
the  great  thinkers  have  built  from  Plato  to  Emer- 
son, and  it  can  never  be  moved. 

Howbeit,  we  must  know  that  spiritual  knowl- 
edge is  different  from  mere  intellectual  in  forma- 


18  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

tion,  not  only  different,  but  deeper.  We  know  a 
thing  mentally  by  looking  at  it  from  the  outside, 
by  comparing  it  with  other  things,  by  analyzing 
and  defining  it.  Whereas,  we  can  know  a  thing 
spiritually  only  by  becoming  like  it.  One  may 
know  the  theory  and  philosophy  of  music,  but  he 
does  not  know  music  until  his  soul  answers  to  its 
appeal  of  melody.  One  must  love  in  order  to 
know  love,  as  it  is  written,  "  He  who  loveth  is  born 
of  God  and  knozveth  God,  for  God  is  love."  Like 
is  known  only  to  like,  and  the  one  condition  of 
the  highest  knowledge  is  likeness  to,  and  union 
with,  the  object  of  knowledge.  Therefore  the 
ceaseless  aspiration  of  the  mystic  is  to  be  godlike, 
that  he  may  know  God.  As  Eckhart  said,  God 
and  the  soul  are  one  in  the  act  of  knowing  Him. 

Why  do  we  love  music?  What  is  the  secret  of 
that  strange,  sweet  enchantment  which  music  casts 
over  us,  lifting  us  for  a  brief  time  out  of  the  fret 
and  jar  of  life  into  a  free  and  happy  air?  Music 
is  unity,  harmony,  an  echo  of  that  infinite  harmony 
we  call  God  —  a  prophecy  of  the  truth  that  all 
discords  to  one  concord  lead.  That  is  to  say, 
music  is  mystical,  like  love,  like  beauty,  like 
prayer,  like  all  else  that  makes  our  life  luminous 
and  free;  and  mysticism  is  religion.  Everything 
that  brings  us  into  harmony  with  ourselves,  with 
the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good,  is  religion. 
That  is  why  the  religious  aspiration  is  the  inspira- 
tion of  all  scientific  search,  which  is  a  search  for 


THE  ETERNAL  RELIGION  19 

harmony,  all  striving  for  liberty,  all  virtue  and 
charity  —  the  spirit  of  all  high  thought,  the 
motif  of  all  great  music,  the  soul  of  all  great  lit- 
erature. Such  a  conception  of  religion  shakes  the 
poison  out  of  all  our  wild  flowers,  and  shows  us 
that  in  all  high  endeavor  we  are  seeking  union 
with  God : 

"  For  not  alone  in  starry  skies 

In  vastness  all  abroad, 
But  everywhere  in  every  place 

Abides  the  whole  of  God. 
For  God  is  never  so  far  off 

As  even  to  be  near. 
He  is  within,  our  spirit  is 

What  He  holds  most  dear." 

Love  of  God  and  love  of  man  —  that  is  the  one 
eternal  religion  in  which  all  men  agree.  What  is 
the  relation  of  Christianity  to  this  eternal  religion  ? 
Most  of  us  were  brought  up  to  think  that  Chris- 
tianity is  the  one  true  religion,  and  that  all  others 
are  false.  How  does  it  look  now  ?  Is  it  Christian 
to  think  that  those  vast  populations,  following 
each  other  through  millenniums,  all  of  them  eager, 
as  we  are,  to  know  the  truth,  sinning  and  suffering 
like  ourselves,  and  like  ourselves  boundlessly  as- 
piring, were  left  without  God  and  without  hope? 
Wider  knowledge  of  our  race,  together  with  the 
irresistible  maturing  of  the  human  mind,  have 
made  such  a  notion  intolerable  alike  to  heart  and 
mind.  Nor  are  we  the  first  to  ask  such  a  ques- 
tion.    Chrysostom  tells   us  that  the  men  of  his 


20  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

church  asked  why  Christ  did  not  come  sooner,  and 
what  about  the  deahng  of  God  with  those  who 
lived  before  He  came? 

For  many  it  will  be  surprising  to  know  that  the 
early  Christian  thinkers  held  no  such  narrow  no- 
tions as  we  have  been  taught  to  hold.  Far  from 
it.  Justin  Martyr  held  that  Socrates  was  in- 
spired by  the  "  eternal  Word "  made  flesh  in 
Christ,  and  with  this  Origen  agreed.  Augustine 
said  that  the  Christian  faith  is  that  which  has 
been  in  the  world  from  the  beginning,  and  has  not 
been  absent  from  any  age.  Erasmus  actually 
came  forward  with  a  plea  to  canonize  Socrates  and 
Vergil  as  saints  of  the  most  high  God.  Such  has 
been  the  faith  and  feeling  of  all  the  great  catholic 
souls,  as  witness  the  words  of  William  Law,  which 
Wesley  made  his  own : 

"  Perhaps  what  the  best  heathens  called  Reason, 
and  Solomon  Wisdom,  St.  Paul  Grace  in  general, 
St.  John  Righteousness  or  Love,  Luther  Faith, 
Fenelon  Virtue,  may  be  only  different  expressions 
for  one  and  the  same  blessing,  the  light  of  Christ 
shining  in  different  degrees  under  different  dis- 
pensations. Why  then  so  many  words,  and  so 
little  charity  exercised  among  Christians,  about 
the  particular  term  of  a  blessing  experienced  more 
or  less  by  all  righteous  men !  " 

Here  are  great  and  true  words,  worthy  to  be 
writ  in  letters  of  light,  and  they  rebuke  our  petty 
bigotries  with  their  simple  insight  and  the  dignity 


THE  ETERNAL  RELIGION  21 

of  their  golden  voice.  No;  Christianity  is  not  to 
be  set  over  against  other  forms  of  faith  as  some- 
thing inserted  into  human  history,  but  as  some- 
thing growing  up  out  of  the  universal  religion  of 
humanity  —  the  loveliest  flov^er  in  the  garden  of 
God.  Christ  did  not  come  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil 
—  the  desire  of  all  nations,  the  great  Musician 
who  gathered  up  into  His  sweet  voice  every 
wandering  human  tone,  weaving  them  into  one 
sovereign  harmony.  And  this,  so  far  from  being 
a  compromise  of  our  faith,  is  a  vast  reinforcement 
and  confirmation  of  it.  Its  position  becomes  more 
secure  in  a  new  way,  by  the  discovery  that  it  is  a 
fulfilment  of  age-long  prophecy  —  the  eternal  re- 
ligion, the  crown  of  all,  because  the  flower  and 
fruit  of  all. 

How  unforgetable  are  the  words  of  William 
Penn,  when  he  said  that  all  merciful,  humble,  just, 
and  devout  souls  are  everywhere  of  one  religion, 
and  when  death  hath  taken  off  the  mask,  they  will 
know  and  love  each  other.  Happily  we  no  longer 
have  to  wait  for  death  to  remove  the  mask  that 
hides  man  from  his  fellow  soul!  Our  age  has 
many  faults,  but  it  is  great  in  its  sense  of  the  unity 
of  mankind,  in  its  vision  of  the  solidarity  of  faith 
and  hope.  As  Mark  Rutherford  said,  we  are 
coming  to  see  that  "  we  are  one  in  the  human,  the 
immense  orthodoxy  which  lies  beneath  our  differ- 
ences," and  this  makes  for  a  friendship  of  faiths. 
The  human   fellowship   with  the   Eternal,   under 


2g  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

whatever  name,  may  well  hush  all  words,  still  more 
hush  debate.  If  its  unity  is  not  recognized,  the 
fault  must  be,  in  large  part,  our  own.  But  given 
the  one  great  experience,  and  at  last,  despite  all 
variations  of  insight  and  emphasis,  kindred  souls 
will  join  in  the  one  eternal  religion  —  knowing 
that,  even  when  they  use  different  phrases,  all  are 
trying  to  tell,  each  in  his  own  tongue,  the  truth 
that  is  the  treasure  of  all. 

Since  this  is  so,  since  we  are  partakers  of  a 
like  precious  faith  and  hope  and  vision,  it  ought  to 
be  easy  for  us  to  love  all  our  fellow-workers  in 
the  cause  of  moral  culture  and  spiritual  life. 
Just  because  religion  is  life,  it  takes  many  forms 
in  infinite  variety,  and  its  myriad  colors  bespeak  its 
vitality  and  beauty.  Had  Confucius,  Buddha, 
Plato,  Socrates,  Plutarch  sat  on  the  grass  and  lis- 
tened to  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  all  would  have 
said  Amen.  In  like  spirit  let  us  seek  to  know,  to 
understand,  and  to  love  our  fellow  seekers  and 
finders  of  the  God  who  is  the  Father  of  all,  and 
the  Savior  of  each.  Evermore  it  is  the  truth  that 
makes  us  free,  and  the  more  truth  we  know  the 
freer  we  shall  be,  building  more  stately  mansions, 
for  the  soul  till  at  length  we  are  free  indeed. 
What  Longfellow  said  of  Channing  may  well  be 
the  life  and  labor  of  every  man  who  loves  God  and 
his  fellows : 

"  With   reverent  feet  the  earth  he  trod, 
Nor  banished  nature  from  his  plan; 


THE  ETERNAL  RELIGION  23 

But  studied  still  with  deep  research 
To  build  a  universal  Church, 
Lofty  as  the  love  of  God, 
And  ample  as  the  wants  of  man." 


Ill 

THE  FIRST  TRUTH 
"In  the  beginning  God." — Gen.  i:  i. 

HERE  is  the  first  truth  and  the  last,  the 
greatest  thought  in  the  world,  the  most 
profound,  the  most  revealing,  the  most 
satisfying.  History  tells  us  What  has  happened, 
science  seeks  to  know  How  it  happened,  philosophy 
tries  to  tell  us  Why  it  happened;  but  they  leave 
us  with  one  question  still  in  our  hearts.  What 
we  most  want  to  know  is.  Who  made  it  happen, 
Who  spread  out  this  far-shining  city  of  the  uni- 
verse and  gave  us  a  home  and  a  duty  in  it  ?  That 
is  why,  after  man  has  studied  the  earth  and  the 
sky,  and  reviews  what  he  has  learned,  he  finds  his 
heart  unsatisfied,  and  even  restless,  until  one  other 
question  is  somehow  answered.  So  it  has  been 
from  the  beginning,  and  so  it  will  be  until  the  end, 
while  human  nature  is  the  same. 

Therefore  it  is  that  the  Bible,  the  wisest  and 
deepest  book  that  broods  over  the  mystery  of  life, 
begins  its  great  story  at  the  beginning,  and  an- 
swers the  last  question  first.  Nor  has  all  the  wit 
and  wisdom  of  the  ages  been  able  to  give  a  better 
answer.     With  an  insight  clear  as  light  the  old 

25 


THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 


book  goes  straight  to  the  heart  of  the  mystery, 
and  time  has  shown  that  its  answer  is  in  accord 
with  right  reason,  the  verdict  of  moral  sanity,  and 
the  testimony  of  facts  when  rightly  read.  The 
Bible  does  not  argue;  it  affirms.  Its  truth  is  the 
fruit  of  religious  experience,  and  its  vision  of  the 
unity,  spirituality  and  righteousness  of  God,  who 
is  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  all  things,  is  the 
greatest  gift  that  ever  came  to  the  world  from  any 
source. 

Admit  that  this  truth  dawned  slowly  and  dimly 
upon  the  human  mind,  amidst  narrow  notions, 
limited  and  passionate  like  the  people  who  saw  it, 
the  following  of  that  vision  becomes  the  more 
pathetic  and  heroic.  No  matter;  it  grew  as  the 
mind  of  man  was  able  to  grasp  it,  and  the  heart 
was  pure  enough  to  hold  it.  From  time  to  time 
a  radiant  man  was  born  who  added  something  of 
powder  and  dignity  to  that  which  his  race  revealed, 
making  the  truth  clearer.  Other  races,  such  as 
Egypt  and  India,  outtopped  the  Hebrews  in  intel- 
lectual and  artistic  power,  but  in  the  depth  and 
sanity  of  their  religious  insight  the  mighty  seers 
who  wrote  the  Bible  have  never  been  equaled. 
Even  to-day  we  are  only  beginning  to  spell  out  the 
meaning  of  the  unity  of  the  universe,  which  they 
beheld  ages  ago.  Let  us  never  forget  that  long 
before  science  learned  to  talk  about  the  physical 
unity  of  the  world,  those  hoary  prophets  saw  its 
moral  and  spiritual  vmity  in  God.     For  them,  He 


THE  FIRST  TRUTH  27 

who  was  God  from  everlasting,  before  ever  the 
earth  was  formed,  was  the  sufficient  ground  for 
every  possible  unity  of  science  and  philosophy  — 
so  far  and  so  fast  did  their  spiritual  insight  out- 
run the  intellect  of  the  race. 

No  one  ought  ever  again  to  take  this  text  and 
forget  the  lines  of  Alfred  Noyes  in  exposition  of 
it.  Some  of  us  heard  him  read  these  lines  when 
he  was  here  as  our  guest,  his  face  aglow  with  the 
faith  of  which  he  sang,  his  body  swayed  by  the 
music  of  his  words.  Written  at  a  time  when  men 
fancied  that  they  had  found  the  Origin  of  Life 
this  side  of  God,  the  poem  takes  us  back  behind 
the  centuries,  back  of  the  mire  and  slime  of  evo- 
lution, back  into  the  darkness  before  the  dawn  of 
creative  time,  and  demands,  as  a  challenge  alike  to 
reason  and  reverence,  that  men  kneel  where  once 
they  dared  to  doubt.  Hear  now  an  authentic 
strain  of  the  ancient  faith  of  humanity : 

"'In  the  beginning?' — Slowly  grope  we  back 

Along  the  narrowing  track. 
Back  to  the  deserts  of  the  world's  pale  prime, 

The  mire,  the  clay,  the  slime ; 
And  then,   what  then?     Surely   something  less; 

Back,  back  to  Nothingness ! 
You  dare  not  halt  upon  that  dwindling  way! 

There  is  no  gulf  to  stay 
Your   footsteps  to  the   last.     Go  back  you  must ! 

Far,  far  below  the  dust, 
Descend,  descend !     Grade  by  dissolving  grade, 

We  follow,  unafraid ! 
Dissolve,    dissolve   this   moving   world    of   men 

Into  thin  air  —  and  then? 


28  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

"  O  pioneers,  O  warriors  of  the  Light, 

In  that  abysmal  night, 
Will  you  have  courage,  then,  to  rise  and  tell 

Earth  of  this  miracle? 
Will  you  have  courage,  then,  to  bow  the  head, 

And  say,  when  all  is  said  — 
'  Out  of  this  Nothingness  arose  our  thought ! 

This  blank  abysmal  nought 
Woke,  and  brought  forth  that  lighted  city  street, 

Those  towers,  that  armored  fleet'? 

"  When  you  have  seen  those  vacant  primal  skies 

Beyond  the  centuries. 
Watched  the  pale  mists  across  their  darkened  flow, 

As  in  a  lantern-show. 
Weaving,  by  merest  '  chance,'  out  of  thin  air, 

Pageants  of  praise  and  prayer; 
Watched  the  great  hills  like  clouds  arise  and  set. 

And  one  —  named  Olivet; 
When  you  have  seen,  as  a  shadow  passing  away, 

One  child  clasp  hands  and  pray ; 
When  you  have  seen  emerge  from  that  dark  mire 

One  martyr,  ringed  with  fire ; 
Or,  from  that  Nothingness,  by  special  grace. 

One  woman's  love-lit  face, 

"  Will  you  have  courage,  then,  to  front  that  law 

(From  which  your  sophists  draw 
Their  only  right  to  flout  our  human  creed) 

That  nothing  can  proceed  — 
Not  even  thought,  not  even  love  —  from  less 

Than  its  own  nothingness? 
The  law  is  yours !     But  dare  you  waive  your  pride. 

And  kneel  where  you  denied? 
The  law  is  yours !     Dare  you  re-kindle,  then. 

One  faith  for  faithless  men. 
And  say  you  found,  on  that  dark  road  you  trod, 
'  In  the  beginning  —  God '  ?  " 

An  atheist,  if  he  be  honest,  is  worthy  of  respect, 
but  he  ought  to  be  brave  enough  to  follow  his 
logic  to  its  ultimate  limit.     Few,  however,  have 


THE  FIRST  TRUTH  29 


ever  dared  to  do  it.     Romanes  confessed,  when  he 
had  lost  faith  in  God,  that  he  was  strangely  lonely, 
and  that  life  had  lost  its  soul  of  loveliness.     Do- 
stoevsky,  driven  by  doubt  into  dark  despair,  felt 
that  God  pursued  him  even  into  the  shadows  and 
would  not  let  him  alone.     Of  men  of  refined  and 
sensitive  nature,  only  Nietzsche  was  heroic  enough 
to  face  the  raw  horror  at  the  end  of  his  logic  of 
denial,  and  the  result  was  obfuscation  of  intellect 
and  final  insanity.     How  pathetic  are  his  words 
lamenting  his  loss  of  the  right  to  pray!     They 
move  like  a  dirge,   with  the  solemn  step  of  the 
funeral  chant  in  the  music  of  Chopin,  and  they 
tell,  as  perhaps  no  other  words  have  told,  what 
atheism  means  to  a  heart  that  feels : 

"  Never  more  wilt  thou  pray,  never  more  wor- 
ship, never  more  repose  in  boundless  trust  —  thou 
renouncest  the  privilege  of  standing  before  an  ulti- 
mate   wisdom,    an    ultimate    mercy,    an    ultimate 
power,    and    unharnessing    thy    thoughts  —  thou 
hast  no  constant  watcher  and  friend  for  thy  seven 
solitudes  —  thou    livest    without    gazing    upon    a 
mountain  that  hath  snow  on  its  head  and  fire  at 
its  heart  —  there  is  now  no  redeemer  for  thee,  no 
one  to  promise  a  better  life  — there  is  no  more 
reason  in  that  which  happens,  no  love  in  that  which 
shall  happen  to  thee  —  thy  heart  hath  now  no  rest- 
ing-place, where  it  needeth  only  to  find,  not  to 
seek;  thou  refusest  any  ultimate  peace,  thou  de- 
sirest  the  eternal  recurrence  of  war  and  peace  — 


30  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

man  of  thy  self-denial,  wilt  thou  deny  thyself  all 
this?     Whence  will  thou  gain  the  strength?" 

Now,  remember;  my  talk  to-day  is  no  effort  to 
prove  that  God  is,  which  would  be  too  much  like 
arguing  about  the  air  we  breathe,  or  the  light  by 
which  we  see.  Fact  is,  if  there  were  no  God  no 
one  would  think  about  Him  at  all,  no  one  would 
believe  in  Him,  much  less  deny  Him.  Our  very 
doubts  bear  witness  to  His  reality.  H  one  so  far 
forgets  the  ancient  sanities  and  sanctities  of  his 
race  as  to  argue  about  God,  he  must  have  a  care 
how  he  does  it.  In  order  to  argue  a  man  must 
assume  that  he  has  a  mind,  and  if  there  be  no  eter- 
nal Mind  that  is  a  violent  assumption.  One  might 
perhaps  prove,  by  logic,  that  there  ought  to  be  a 
God,  but  he  cannot  prove  God  by  logic,  since  logic 
itself  must  first  be  proved  valid.  No,  my  thesis  is 
that  unless  we  find  God  at  the  beginning  of  our 
thought,  we  cannot  hope  to  find  Him  at  the  end, 
or,  indeed,  anywhere.  Whoso  ascends  from  a 
godless  world  will  reach  only  a  godless  heaven, 
and  will  come  down  empty-hearted. 

Nevertheless,  let  us  climb  one  of  the  many  lad- 
ders of  logic  and  see  what  we  shall  see.  For  ex- 
ample, let  us  say.  In  the  beginning  Law.  One  of 
the  very  first  lessons  of  science  is  that  the  universe 
is  ruled  by  law.  Atoms  and  masses,  ponderables 
and  imponderables,  dew-drops  and  stars  —  all  are 
evidently  under  the  reign  of  law.  Not  a  seed 
grows,  not  a  leaf  opens,  not  a  bud  bursts,  not  a 


THE  FIRST  TRUTH  31 

snowflake  falls,  not  a  cloud  gathers,  not  a  wind 
blows,  not  a  tide  flows,  but  according  to  law. 
These  laws  are  universal,  as  active  in  the  instant 
present  as  in  the  ancient  past.  They  will  be  ac- 
tive in  the  distant  future.  They  rule  the  far-off 
orbs,  even  as  they  sway  our  earth  in  its  orbit, 
securing  order  everywhere.  It  is  as  true  there, 
as  here,  that  light  travels  in  a  straight  line,  that 
heavenly  bodies  move  in  ellipses,  that  like  pro- 
duces like,  and  that  two  bodies  attract  each  other 
with  a  force  that  varies  according  to  the  inverse 
of  the  square  of  their  separating  distance.  Every- 
where law  waves  its  scepter.  Other  planets  have 
died.  Ours  may.  In  1866  a  star  flared  up  out  of 
the  edge  of  the  sky  with  a  brilliancy  equaling 
Sirius  or  Vega.  Soon  it  began  to  fade.  The 
spectroscope  revealed  the  red,  green  and  violet 
lines  of  hydrogen  fires.  It  was  burned  to  a  cinder. 
If  our  sun  should  blaze  out  like  that  the  earth  and 
all  its  planets  would  be  converted  into  gases  as 
quickly  as  a  drop  of  water  turns  to  vapor  in  the 
furnace.  Yet  still  would  law  prevail,  as  it  pre- 
vailed before  the  earth  was  born. 

Now  reason  commands  us  to  believe  that  Law 
presupposes  Design,  else  it  were  not  law,  but  chaos. 
Design  is  the  logical,  if  not  intuitional,  inference 
from  the  fact  of  law.  We  are  forced  to  think  so. 
Socrates  used  a  statue  as  an  illustration,  Paley  a 
watch,  Fiske  a  flower.  No  matter,  the  result  is 
the  same.     So  the  proposition  stands :  in  the  be- 


THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 


ginning  Law;  in  the  law,  Design.  But  design 
presupposes  intelligence.  The  various  and  in- 
tricate designs  of  natural  law  are  evidence  of  an 
intelligence  so  complex,  so  beyond  the  power  of 
man  to  comprehend,  that  deist,  theist  and  atheist 
alike  unite  to  call  it  Infinite.  To  be  sure,  we  have 
not  read  much  in  the  Book  of  Nature,  only  here  a 
word  and  there  a  line,  and  many  pages  are  still 
dark.  But,  so  far  as  we  can  read,  its  lawful  order 
points  to  an  infinite  intelligence.  Also,  new  pages 
are  daily  being  added  to  it.  Now  where  are  we? 
In  the  beginning  Law;  in  law  Design;  in  design 
Intelligence  —  in  infinite  design,  Infinite  Intel- 
ligence. Inevitably,  to  this  result  runs  the  logic 
of  the  ages. 

Some  of  us  have  walked  dim  paths  in  days 
agone,  under  gray  skies,  but  we  never  fell  into 
the  profound  unreason  of  thinking  that  man  alone 
has  mind.  Yet  just  as  certainly  is  it  true  that  a 
God  who  is  found  at  the  top  of  a  logical  ladder 
will  never  satisfy  the  human  mind,  much  less  win 
the  love  of  the  human  heart.  What  we  want  is 
not  the  conclusion  of  an  argument,  not  a  proposi- 
tion of  logic,  but  the  living  God  in  whom  we  live 
and  by  whose  grace  we  may  live  godlike  lives. 
This  too  is  certain :  until  we  find  the  Living  God  — 
who  is  not  far  from  any  one  of  us,  but  with  us 
always,  even  in  our  hearts  —  life  is  a  restless 
fever,    a    dull    indifference,    or   a   dumb   despair. 


THE  FIRST  TRUTH  33 

Therefore,  he  is  wisest  who  seeks  the  first  truth 
first,  who  finds  the  Hving  God  in  the  morning  of 
Hfe,  in  the  laws  of  reason,  in  the  prophecies  of 
love,  in  the  promptings  of  conscience — for  no 
imaginable  dance  of  atoms  could  have  evoked  the 
moral  sense  in  man  —  for  he  who  finds  God  early 
will  find  Him  late,  and  at  eventide  there  will  be 
light  all  round  the  sky.  By  the  same  token,  he 
it  is  who  finds  God  along  the  way,  and,  walking 
humbly  before  Him,  is  the  better  able  to  do  justly, 
to  love  mercy,  and  to  serve  his  fellow  souls. 

In  the  beginning  God  —  here  is  the  truth  that 
lets  light  through  the  long,  dark,  tragic  story  of 
Evolution,  and  its  slow  ascending  effort.  St.  Paul 
saw  this  gleam  centuries  ago,  in  his  vision  of  the 
birth  travail  of  the  universe,  the  key  and  prophetic 
consummation  of  which  he  found  in  Christ;  and 
his  insight  was  as  profound  as  it  was  true.  For 
him,  a  universe  that  could  produce  Christ  became 
a  thing  of  splendor,  despite  its  tragedy  and  woe. 
For  him,  the  fact  of  Christ  became,  and  rightly 
so,  the  foundation  of  any  philosophy  of  nature, 
the  clue  to  any  explanation  of  life,  and  the  hope 
of  the  victory  of  righteousness,  His  spirit  a  revela- 
tion of  the  purpose  of  the  world  and  a  prophecy 
of  its  end.  Aye,  what  a  light  is  here,  shining  far 
back  down  the  unreckonable  ages,  transfiguring 
even  the  mud  and  slime  of  primeval  time;  and  in 
its  glow  the  darkness  fades  away: 


84  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

"  A  fire-mist  and  a  planet, 

A  crystal  and  a  cell, 
A  jelly-fish  and  a  saurian. 

And  caves  where  the  cave-men  dwell; 
Then  a  sense  of  law  and  beauty, 

And  a  face  turned  from  the  clod  — 
Some  call  it  Evolution, 

And  others  call  it  God." 

In  the  beginning,  God  —  so  and  only  so  can  we 
read  the  mystery  of  our  own  hearts,  with  their 
strange  longings,  their  aspirations  heaven-high, 
their  sorrows  fathoms  deep,  and  their  thoughts 
that  wander  through  eternity.  Otherwise  our 
minds  are  like  Whitman's  Noiseless  and  Patient 
Spider,  forever  spinning  threads  of  thought  and 
throwing  them  out  into  the  void,  and  forever  hop- 
ing that  they  will  catch  somewhere.  But  once  we 
know  that  at  the  beginning,  at  the  end,  over  all, 
through  all,  there  is  a  mighty  and  loving  Thinker, 
whose  thoughts  evoke  our  thoughts,  whose  beauty 
woos  us  with  its  loveliness,  whose  love  begets 
within  us  a  love  that  defies  death,  then  our  life  has 
dignity  and  meaning,  and  religious  experience, 
equally  with  artistic  creation  and  scientific  quest, 
finds  explanation  and  inspiration.  Then,  too,  we 
know  why  there  come  moments  when  earth  seems 
too  tiny  for  the  thoughts  that  well  up  within  us, 
and  our  fleeting  life  too  frail  and  brief  to  achieve 
the  things  we  dare  to  dream;  those  moments  of 
revelation,  when 

"  Like  tides  on  a  crescent  sea-beach, 
When  the  moon  is  new  and  thin. 


THE  FIRST  TRUTH  85 

Into  our  hearts  high  yearnings 

Come  swelling  and  surging  in : 
Come  from  that  mystic  ocean 

Whose  rim  no  foot  has  trod  — 
Some  of  us  call  it  Longing, 

And  others  call  it  God." 

In  the  beginning,  God  —  not  otherwise  can  we 
justify  the  ideaHsms,  the  altruisms,  and  the  hero- 
isms of  our  poor  humanity.  At  times  one  is 
tempted  to  agree  with  Machiavelli  that  men  are  a 
measly  lot,  selfish,  petty,  incredibly  mean,  absurdly 
vain,  unspeakably  vile.  Human  nature  can  sink 
so  low  that  it  must  make  the  animals  ashamed. 
There  are  eras  when  the  whole  world  seems  rot- 
ten, when  love  is  lust  and  gold  is  god,  and  every 
kind  of  slimy  thing  runs  riot.  Our  own  day,  with 
its  wild  hell  of  universal  war  and  slaughter,  is  a 
time  to  try  the  souls  of  men,  and  one  often  feels 
like  Elijah  under  the  juniper  tree  making  request 
to  die.  Yet  he  forgot,  what  we  forget,  that  even 
in  an  age  as  foul  as  a  pig  sty  there  were  thou- 
sands who  had  not  bowed  the  knee  to  Baal.  In 
every  age  there  are  those  to  whom  the  Ideal  is  the 
shadow  of  God  in  the  mind  of  man  —  souls  that 
remain  true  though  lewdness  woo  them  in  the  shape 
of  heaven;  men  who  will  die  for  the  right  and 
count  it  an  honor;  soldiers  of  God  who  never  sur- 
render and  never  fear : 

"  A  picket  frozen  on  duty, 

A  mother  starved  for  her  brood, 
Socrates  drinking  the  hemlock, 
And  Jesus  on  the  rood; 


THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 


And  millions  who,  humble  and  nameless, 
The  straight,  hard  pathway  plod—" 

Some  call  it  Consecration, 
And  others  call  it  God." 

In  the  beginning,  God  —  even  He  whose  love 
hath  made  us,  and  endowed  us  with  faculties  al- 
most divine ;  who  has  made  a  world  for  our  home, 
who  spreads  our  table  and  renews  our  youth;  He 
whose  love  suffers  long  and  still  is  kind.  Here 
is  the  truth  about  this  our  mortal  life,  and  its 
explanation.  It  broadens  our  horizon,  so  that  life 
means  more  than  "  a  blunder  or  a  sorry  jest," 
something  more  than  the  "  stuff  that  dreams  are 
made  of,"  something  more  than  a  few  fleeting 
years  between  a  birth  and  a  burial. 

"  This  is  the  glory  —  that  in  all  conceived, 
Or  felt,  or  known,  I  recognize  a  mind 
Not  mine,  but  like  mine  —  for  the  double  joy  — 
Making  all  things  for  me  and  me  for  Him." 


IV 

THE  HIDDEN  GOD 

"  Oh  that  I  knew  where  I  might  find  him !  " —  Job  33 :  3. 

"Though  he  be  not   far   from  every  one  of   us." — Acts 
17 :  27. 

"Verily,  thou  art  a  God  that  hidest  thyself."— /^o.  45:  15. 

OF  old  Job  Uttered  his  cry  for  God  in  the 
desert,  and  it  has  found  echo  in  every 
age  and  every  land.  Even  in  the  grey 
dawn  of  time  we  see  human  hands  stretched  out 
to  heaven  in  quest  of  God ;  and  all  along  the  dark 
and  tangled  path  of  history,  in 

"  The  night-time  when  nations  wander 
From  Eden  past  to  Paradise  to  be," 

the  search  goes  on.     To-day,  at  noontide,  not  less 

than  in  the  twilight  of  the  world,  on  the  peaks  of 

thought,  in  the  shadowy  labyrinths  of  metaphysics, 

in  the  temple  and  in  the  field,  in  the  library  and 

laboratory,   at  the  end   of   the  long  marches   of 

the  intellect,  in  the  valley  of  sorrow,  and  at  the 

gates  of  the  grave  —  evermore  the  same  cry  is 

heard. 

Unconscious  oft,  unsatisfied  ever,  we  are  all  en- 
37 


88  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

gaged  in  this  one  great  quest.  Though  he  may 
not  know  it,  and  would  perhaps  demur,  the  man  of 
science,  not  less  than  the  saint,  each  in  his  own 
way  is  trying  to  find  God  in  His  works;  and  the 
physician  equally  with  the  farmer.  Not  all  men 
are  conscious  of  the  nature  of  the  unrest  which 
makes  them  seekers  and  pilgrims,  but  when  they 
become  aware  of  the  path  which  leads  thither 
where  they  want  to  go,  they  know  that  the  goal 
is  God.  This  is  the  one  great  human  adventure. 
Taking  nothing  with  us  which  does  not  belong  to 
us,  leaving  behind  nothing  that  is  of  our  true 
selves,  we  shall  find  in  the  great  attainment  that 
all  our  fellow  mortals  have  been  our  comrades. 
Ever  the  quest  goes  on,  and  ever  shall  the  study 
of  the  ways  which  have  been  followed  by  those 
who  have  passed  in  front  of  us  be  a  help  on  our 
own  path. 

Worse  than  idle  is  the  effort  of  the  skeptic  to 
stop  this  quest  by  saying  that  it  is  a  useless  one. 
It  is  not  useless,  as  a  glance  back  over  the  way 
our  race  has  journeyed  will  show.  The  first  word 
for  God  meant,  literally,  the  dreadful  One.  Later 
men  thought  of  Him  as  a  white-haired  patriarch 
dwelling  in  a  sky-tent,  leading  a  flock  of  stars; 
then  as  a  monarch  sitting  on  a  dazzling  throne. 
Still  later  they  saw  a  big  Man  who  made  the 
world,  set  it  going,  and  left  it  to  run,  manifesting 
Himself  in  occasional  miracles.  In  our  age  we 
think  of  God  as  the  all-pervading,  sustaining,  in- 


THE  HIDDEN  GOD  39 

dwelling  Spirit,  greater,  wiser  and  better  than  we 
know  how  to  think,  and  therefore  worthy  of  wor- 
ship. But  it  was  only  by  untiring  search,  by  ris- 
ing on  stepping  stones  of  old  dead  faiths,  that  we 
attained  to  this  larger,  nobler  faith.  Those  who 
seek  find,  not  because  God  is  far  off,  but  because 
the  discipline  of  the  quest  makes  us  worthy  of  a 
more  revealing  vision. 

Underlying  this  perpetual  quest  is  the  feeling, 
the  faith,  that  God  is  the  beginning,  the  inspira- 
tion, and  the  end  of  human  life;  and  that  intuition 
is  true.  The  great  thinker  was  right  when  he  re- 
fused to  believe  in  the  reality  of  anything  until 
he  had  satisfied  himself  of  the  reality  of  God.  He 
saw  that  without  God  all  is  dream  and  shadow 
here  below,  as  futile  as  fleeting.  Still,  such  is  the 
elusiveness  of  God,  that  we  search  in  the  far-away 
sky,  and  in  the  dark  tower  of  speculation,  for  One 
who  is  nearer  than  hands  and  feet.  All  men,  ex- 
cept the  most  dim-souled,  feel  at  times  an  awful 
yet  gracious  Presence  haunting  the  world,  giving 
to  nature  a  strange  and  solemn  beauty.  It  is  the 
self-concealing,  invisible  God,  at  once  inescapable 
and  uncapturable.  Listen  reverently,  and  He 
whispers  to  us;  invade  His  silence,  and  He  van- 
ishes. Nothing  is  more  impressive,  more  allur- 
ing, than  this  hiding  of  God,  whereby  He  leads  us 
after  Him  in  endless  quest  and  "  draws  out  the 
lines  of  life  from  living  knowledge  hid." 

Not  far  from  every  one  of  us  —  but  man  al- 


40  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

ways  fails  to  see  what  is  nearest  to  him.  Great 
truths  peep  out  at  us  from  nearby  facts,  but  we  do 
not  see  them.  Apples  had  been  falling  since  the 
days  of  Adam,  but  it  was  ages  before  man  saw  in 
the  fall  of  an  apple  the  law  that  holds  all  things  to 
the  earth.  It  seems  that  we  must  actually  trip 
and  fall  over  a  truth  before  we  find  it.  The 
prophet  is  the  man  who  sees  the  obvious  truths 
which  we  overlook,  and  that  is  why  we  get  angry 
at  him  and  call  him  a  mystic.  It  was  the  great 
and  simple  word  of  Jesus  that  God  is  found  not 
in  the  sky  above,  nor  in  the  wandering  stars,  but 
in  the  soul  of  man.  He  is  ever  telling  us  that  the 
pure  in  heart  see  God,  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
is  within,  and  that  the  highest  reality  is  hidden 
from  the  learned  and  wise  and  revealed  to  the 
simple  and  child-like  of  soul.  Of  a  truth,  God 
hides  Himself,  but  only  because  we  are  slow  of 
heart  and  have  not  eyes  to  see. 

He  is  hidden  in  Nature,  and  it  is  the  perfection 
of  His  work  conceals  Him.  Often  nature  is  al- 
most transparent  and  we  seem  to  be  in  the  very 
presence  of  the  Eternal,  with  but  a  filmy  veil  to 
obscure.  There  are  scenes  so  ineffably  lovely  that 
they  turn  our  hearts  into  homes  of  silent  prayer; 
but  if  we  drink  of  her  tenderness  we  must  also 
taste  of  her  terror.  Between  man  and  Nature 
there  is  a  gigantic  struggle,  and  often  she  seems 
heartless  and  cruel.  What  then?  If  God  is  in 
such  hours  of  wild  storm.  He  is  hidden  by  a  thick 


THE  HIDDEN  GOD  41 

and  heavy  drapery.  At  best,  even  when  Nature 
displays  her  beauty  and  sweetness  in  all  their  full- 
ness, she  is  only  the  fringe  of  His  garment,  and 
we  must  go  further  to  find  Him.  Yet  how  won- 
derful is  that  garment  of  God,  how  exquisitely 
woven,  half -concealing  and  half-revealing  Him 
who  wears  it! 

If  you  ever  saw  the  Autobiography  of  Houdin, 
the  famous  French  conjuror,  you  know  the  story 
of  the  wonderful  automaton  figure  of  a  man  which 
he  made.  Wishing  to  imitate  Nature,  he  set  great 
store  on  the  fact  that  the  clock-work  was  noiseless, 
but  he  wrought  too  well.  People  said :  "  Very 
ingenious,  but  probably  simple,  since  often  a  slight 
change  will  effect  great  results."  Then  he  actu- 
ally made  it  less  perfect,  so  that  a  whizzing  sound 
was  heard  within,  and  the  worthy  public  ex- 
claimed :  "  Wonderful !  What  talent,  what  in- 
genuity!" Happily  he  repented  having  injured 
his  machine  to  please  the  public,  and  restored  it  to 
its  first  perfection.  But  God  does  not  mar  His 
work  to  win  the  applause  of  those  who  judge 
things  by  the  noise  they  make.  He  is  calm,  and 
His  vast  plan  moves  on  its  way  in  silence,  even  if 
we  fail  to  see  its  wonder  and  its  mystery. 

Think  of  the  good  ship  Earth  on  which  we  ride 
spinning  through  space  at  such  rapid  speed,  and 
how  quietly.  Thistledown  does  not  float  more 
softly  on  the  breeze,  nor  a  moth  in  the  sunbeam 
more  lightly,  than  this  vast  orb  sweeps  its  orbit. 


42  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

Even  when  the  wind  dies  and  no  single  leaf  stirs, 
we  hear  no  slightest  sound  made  by  this  mighty 
Ship  of  the  Skies,  no  ripple  dashing  on  her  prow, 
no  murmur  in  her  wake.  If  the  seasons  were 
made  by  some  gigantic  lever  hoisting  the  earth  up 
or  down  with  start  and  jolt,  men  would  find  God 
in  the  noise.  If  the  world  were  turned  on  its  axis 
by  a  stupendous  crank  that  hurt  our  ears  with  its 
jar,  how  men  would  stand  aghast  at  the  power  of 
God.  As  it  is,  poised  in  free  space  it  sweeps  its 
mighty  round  in  silence,  and  some  there  are  who, 
hearing  no  noise  and  seeing  no  lever,  doubt 
whether  or  not  there  is  a  God  at  all. 

God  conceals  Himself  in  the  life  of  man,  hid- 
ing in  so  many  forms  of  beauty,  joy  and  sorrow 
that  we  often  fail  to  find  Him.  What  a  testimony 
to  His  ever-present  goodness  is  the  playfulness  of 
young  animals  in  the  spring  sunshine,  and  their 
sheer  glee  at  being  alive!  Lay  your  ear  to  the 
heart  of  a  child  and  you  will  hear  the  same  note  of 
joy,  of  sweet  and  rippling  gladness.  Ever  in  un- 
broken silence  the  eternal  Bounty  pours  out  its 
treasures.  Happy  the  child  who,  when  the  soul 
awakes,  as  it  did  in  Samuel,  has  a  teacher  wise 
enough  to  show  him  who  it  is  that  stirs  within, 
and  how  to  say :  "  Speak,  Lord ;  for  Thy  servant 
heareth."  Aye,  and  happy  is  such  a  teacher;  for 
through  him  the  Spirit  of  the  hidden  God  passes, 
as  melody  through  a  harp,  into  the  soul  of  a  child. 
Even  so  the  Divine  life  passes  from  heart  to  heart, 


THE  HIDDEN  GOD 


from  age  to  age,  in  the  true  apostolic  succession, 
as  the  breeze,  blowing  over  a  field  of  grain,  bows 
each  head  at  its  touch. 

What  man  can  look  into  his  heart  and  trace  the 
genealogy  of  those  mystic  moods  that  come  over 
us  betimes  and  melt  our  minds  to  prayer  and 
praise?  One  moment  life  seems  as  bare  as  a  win- 
ter wood,  and  the  next  it  is  bathed  in  a  beauty  not 
of  earth,  as  if  a  window  of  heaven  had  been 
opened  and  we  heard  the  great  song  of  triumph ! 
When  temptation  strives  within,  tugging  at  our 
senses,  who  is  it  pulls  the  other  way,  seeking  to  hold 
us  back  from  evil?  Even  in  the  most  careless 
soul  there  is  some  bit  of  earnestness,  and  the  harlot 
has  a  fleeting  memory  of  a  day  when  life  was 
stainless.  Whence  our  glimpse  of  the  Ideal,  our 
sense  of  the  Infinite  which  will  not  let  us  rest,  and 
shames  our  performance  in  the  presence  of  our 
promise?  Wherefore  a  slowly  increasing  insight, 
a  gradually  developing  character,  and  a  longing 
for  intellectual  and  spiritual  growth?  George  El- 
iot has  a  noble  page  in  "  Adam  Bede  "  on  which  she 
sees  the  spirit  of  God  moving  in  the  mind  of  the 
inventor,  and  the  lonely  vigil  of  the  thinker. 
Truly  "  God  comes  to  us  without  a  bell,"  and  so 
mingles  with  our  lives  that  we  hardly  know  He  is 
near: 

"  Draw,  if  thou  canst,  the  mystic  line 
Severing  rightly  His  from  thine, 
Which  is  human,  which  Divine ! " 


U  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

There  are  souls  so  great  and  pure  and  noble 
that  in  them  the  hidden  God  seems  to  take  human 
form  and  walk  beside  us,  hallowing  all  our  way. 
One  such  spirit  can  sweeten  the  air  of  a  whole 
age,  as  St.  Francis  did  in  his  day,  and  to  know 
them  is  a  kind  of  religion.  Also,  in  obscure,  un- 
expected lives  we  meet  this  same  wonder.  Heine, 
the  German  poet,  confessed  surprise  that,  "  after 
dancing  nearly  half  a  lifetime  over  the  waxen 
floors  of  philosophy,"  he  had  to  come  at  last  and 
sit  at  the  feet  of  Uncle  Tom  in  his  cabin  to  learn 
the  meaning  of  the  word  God.  Heine  knew  logic ; 
he  knew  philosophy ;  he  was  a  poet  and  a  wit ;  but 
no  one  ever  found  God  by  climbing  the  bright 
stairway  of  the  intellect.  He  who  ascends  from 
a  Godless  earth  will  find  himself  in  a  Godless 
heaven.  Verily  the  old  slave  was  wiser  than  the 
famous  wit,  having  learned  in  sorrow  and  stripes, 
in  poverty  and  bruisings  of  spirit,  the  secret  which 
makes  it  worth  while  to  live,  and  which  lends  lustre 
to  the  hardest,  dingiest  human  lot.  The  spot 
where  God  is  nearest  to  us  is  a  human  soul  ani- 
mated and  aglow  with  His  spirit. 

God  is  hidden  in  history,  in  its  epochs  of  ad- 
vance, its  awful  eras  of  decay,  and  even  in  its 
frightful  scenes  that  make  the  heart  of  man  stand 
still.  As  Froude  said,  history  is  a  voice  that  thun- 
ders through  the  ages  the  laws  of  right  and  wrong. 
Slowly  the  dawn  gains  upon  the  dark,  from  seem- 
ing evil  good  emerges,  and  the  mighty  will  of  God 


THE  HIDDEN  GOD  45 

is  done.  Carlyle,  in  an  hour  of  anguish,  ex- 
claimed, "If  God  would  only  speak  again!  "  echo- 
ing the  old  cry  of  Job,  It  was  a  cry  for  light,  for 
assurance  that  the. things  believed  in  are  true,  for 
certainty  amidst  the  mutations  of  time.  Appar- 
ently he  found  it  easy  to  think  that  God  spoke  to 
men  in  days  of  old,  but  that  was  an  illusion,  in 
so  far  as  it  implied  that  He  does  not  speak  to  men 
to-day.  If  God  has  ever  spoken  to  humanity,  He 
speaks  to  it  in  this  age.  It  is  incredible  that,  in 
the  distant  past,  the  soul  of  man  was  nearer  God 
than  it  is  now. 

Carlyle  himself,  despite  his  limits  of  insight  and 
sympathy,  was  a  prophet  of  the  Most  High.  His 
passion  for  righteousness,  his  protest  against  the 
authority  of  mere  numbers  or  mere  wealth,  his  ap- 
peal for  justice  and  mercy  for  the  poor,  his  affirma- 
tion of  the  supremacy  of  duty  and  the  dignity  of 
the  soul,  betrayed  his  seer-like  genius.  Other 
voices,  more  melting  than  his,  spoke  for  God  in 
that  troublous  time  of  transition.  Every  age  has 
its  witnesses  of  the  God  who,  as  Jesus  said,  is  not 
the  God  of  the  dead  but  of  the  living.  Those  who 
speak  of  God  as  though  His  name  were  /  Was,  in- 
stead of  the  great  /  Am,  are  the  victims  of  that 
illusion  of  distance  whereby  the  past  seems  beau- 
tiful because  its  ugly  features  are  erased.  Yet 
even  this  illusion  may  have  its  ministry,  in  that  it 
forces  us  to  seek  in  the  present  for  Him  who  is  the 
same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever. 


46  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

Why  does  God  hide  Himself  in  Nature,  in  Hu- 
manity, in  History,  eluding  the  eager  quest  of 
man?  Surely  the  reason  must  be  obvious  in  the 
very  nature  of  things.  The  thinkers  of  Eg}^pt 
were  wise  when  they  wrote  over  the  temple  of  Isis 
the  words  of  warning,  "  I  am  what  was,  is,  and  is 
to  be,  and  my  veil  no  man  may  lift  and  live." 
Merciful  is  the  obscurity  which  hides  the  Eternal 
from  us,  lest  we  be  like  the  artist  in  the  legend 
who,  longing  for  beauty,  prayed  to  see  the  ulti- 
mate Beauty.  For  a  moment  the  veil  was  parted, 
and  it  broke  his  heart.  Thereafter,  even  his  no- 
blest work  seemed  but  a  pitiful  daub,  and  he  had  no 
will  to  try  again.  This  is  but  a  feeble  illustration 
of  what  would  happen  if  the  Infinite  were  suddenly 
to  unveil  Himself  to  man.  Pascal  wisely  said: 
"  God  wishes  to  render  Himself  recognizable  to 
such  as  seek  Him  with  their  whole  heart,  and  hid- 
den to  those  who  do  not." 

Those  who  cry  out  that  the  Eternal  drop  His 
veil  know  not  what  they  ask.  If  God  were  to  re- 
veal Himself  as  a  human  personality  reveals  it- 
self, not  only  by  spiritual  influences,  but  by  a  tangi- 
ble presence,  every  man  would  be  struck  dumb, 
every  will  would  be  subjugated,  freedom  would 
vanish  like  a  dream,  and  the  moral  life  would  end. 
The  activity  of  the  moral  world,  with  liberty  of 
choice,  the  chief  function  of  which  is  to  develop 
character,  would  be  instantly  annihilated,  and  men 
would  be  as  puppets.     Nothing  in  the  Divine  edu- 


THE  HIDDEN  GOD  47 

cation  of  man  is  more  striking  than  the  respect 
which  the  Infinite  pays  the  soul  of  man,  and  that 
wise  vagueness  in  which  God  hides,  while  hover- 
ing near  us.  By  His  withdrawal  we  are  able  to 
share  His  thought,  not  merely  receive  it,  and  such 
goodness  as  we  attain  is  ours,  not  merely  His. 
As  it  is.  He  comes  to  us  by  a  thousand  byways  in- 
stead of  standing  in  the  highway;  and  heaven, 
so  far  from  being  forced  upon  us,  is  for  our  seek- 
ing. 

Wisely,  then,  a  veil  is  drawn  between  us  and  a 
Reality  which  would  be  unendurable,  and  never 
yet  has  it  been  lifted.  Even  in  the  life  of  Jesus, 
where,  as  all  admit,  the  Divine  Spirit  wore  our 
human  form,  with  a  voice  that  used  our  homely 
human  speech,  it  was  veiled  in  a  personality,  and 
its  power  was  expressed,  as  human  power  is  ever 
expressed,  chiefly  by  nobility  of  teaching,  by  words 
of  beauty  and  works  of  mercy  which  made  its 
path  through  life  bloom  with  flowers  of  kindness, 
helpfulness,  and  good  cheer;  in  a  spirit  warm  with 
love  and  radiant  with  sweetness  and  a  heavenly 
light.  Yet  there  were  some  who  doubted,  and 
others  who  sneered  and  denied.  Tell  us  plainly, 
said  His  foes;  Show  us  the  Father,  asked  His 
friends;  while  at  that  very  moment  He  walked 
beside  them,  sat  with  them  at  table,  and  uttered 
words  that  can  never  die. 

Thus  God  hides  Himself  from  us,  that  we  may 
taste  the  joy  of  discovering  that  He  is  everywhere 


48  THE  MERCY  OP  HELL 

and  in  everything :  that  "  in  Him  we  Hve  and  move 
and  have  our  being."  Yea,  He  hides  within  us, 
though  few  know  how  to  find  Him.  The  man  who 
sacrifices  his  base  desires  and  works  by  the  will  of 
Him  who  lives  within,  and  whose  law  is  written 
in  his  heart,  attains  to  the  truth  that  makes  him 
free  of  soul. 

"  Great  God  and  Father  of  us  all, 
Forgive  our  faith  in  cruel  lies, 
Forgive  the  blindness  that  denies. 
Cast  down  our  idols  —  overturn 
Our  bloody  altars  —  make  us  see 
Thyself  in  Thy  Humanity." 


WITH  ALL  THY  HEART 

"Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart." 
—  Luke  lo:  27. 

THERE  are  those  who  say  that  a  rose  by 
any  other  name  would  smell  as  sweet, 
but  that  is  not  true.  Mayhap  it  is  true 
to  the  lexicographer,  to  whom  the  rose  is  only  a 
prickly  shrub  bearing  a  flower ;  but  to  the  poet  the 
rose  is  all  that  it  has  become  through  the  praise 
of  the  poets  and  lovers  for  untold  ages,  Saadi 
and  Sappho,  Dante  and  Petrarch,  and  many  a 
singer  in  the  lovely  land  of  England,  have  added 
each  his  touch  of  glamour  and  interpretation,  until 
"  the  rose  is  a  symbol  of  the  pathetic  frailty  and 
evanescence  of  beauty,  an  image  of  the  fragrant 
human  hopes  and  dreams  lost  upon  all  the  winds 
of  the  world,  and  a  reminder  that  the  fairest 
things  are  won  through  toil  and  pain." 

Just  so  it  is,  only  in  a  profounder  way,  with  the 
word  God,  which  gathers  up  into  its  three  letters 
the  history  of  piety,  the  hauntings  of  the  human 
heart  in  its  highest  aspirations,  and  the  whole  of 
theology.     No  other  word  has  such  far-reaching 

4» 


50  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

echoes,  such  exalted  accent,  such  fathomless  sug- 
gestion, such  ineffable  prophecy.  When  we  come 
to  the  end  of  thought,  and  sit  down  on  the  edge 
of  the  infinite,  all  we  can  do  is  to  utter  that  one 
unutterable  name.  All  religion,  all  philosophy,  all 
the  treasures  won  by  man  in  his  long  pilgrimages, 
are  in  that  word.  Age  after  age,  as  mankind  rises 
into  the  life  that  is  life  indeed,  that  word  is  ful- 
filled of  a  holier  and  grander  meaning,  until  to- 
day it  is  itself  a  prayer  in  which  love  and  awe, 
fear  and  hope  and  faith,  are  blended. 

Yet  nothing  is  easier,  as  Newman  said,  than 
"  to  use  the  word  God  and  mean  nothing  by  it." 
What  do  we  mean  by  it?  What  is  God  to  us? 
What  emotion  does  that  word  evoke  in  our  heart, 
what  echoes?  An  answer  to  such  questions  tells 
what  religion  is  to  us,  what  it  means,  and  what  it 
is  worth.  Theologians  talk  of  a  science  of  God, 
but  not  so  the  saints.  "  Lord,  Thou  knowest  our 
foolishness,"  is  the  cry  of  the  humility  that  is 
religious.  He  perfectly  knows  God,  said  Rolle, 
who  realizes  that  He  is  incomprehensible  and  be- 
yond full  knowledge.  What  does  it  mean  to  love 
God?  How  can  we  love  Him?  Can  we  send 
our  love  out  into  the  infinite  and  lay  hold  of  the 
hem  of  His  robe?  When  we  try  to  do  so  our 
very  thought  seems  to  melt  like  a  mist  into  the 
sky,  lost  beyond  tracing.  How  can  we  love  the 
Infinite,  the  Unseen,  the  Incomprehensible,  as  we 
are  bidden  to  do  in  the  first  and  greatest  command- 


WITH  ALL  THY  HEART  51 

ment?  If  this  can  be  made  plain  to  us,  surely  the 
hour  has  not  been  spent  in  vain. 

There  is  a  lovely  bit  of  scenery  in  the  vale  of 
Mickleham,  between  Leatherhead  and  Dorking, 
where  the  creeping  Mole  winds  its  way  between 
Box  Hill  and  the  park  lands  of  Norbury.  At  the 
point  where  the  highway  spans  the  stream  at  Bur- 
ford  Bridge  there  is  an  ancient  and  much  fre- 
quented inn,  where  Stevenson  rested  for  a  time, 
and  where,  in  an  earlier  day,  Keats  wrote  a  part 
of  his  "  Endymion."  Taking  the  old  moon-myth 
of  classic  lore,  he  recast  it,  filling  it  with  all  the 
bewildering,  teeming  richness  of  his  invention  and 
insight.  Two  great  truths,  both  quite  simple  in 
themselves,  may  be  traced  all  through  the  intrica- 
cies of  a  poem  written  in  the  dialect  of  angels,  in 
tales  and  golden  histories.  One  is  that  the  soul, 
seeking  union  with  the  eternal  Beauty,  cannot 
achieve  its  quest  in  solitude  and  selfishness,  but 
only  after  being  purified  and  set  free  from  self. 
The  whole  third  book  of  Endymion  tells  how  the 
hero,  surprised  into  self- forget  fulness  by  sympathy 
with  the  sage  and  sea-god  under  the  afflictions 
laid  upon  him,  is  enabled  to  break  the  evil  spell  of 
Circe.  For  reward  he  is  endowed  by  the  sage  with 
all  his  own  dear-bought  treasures  of  mystic  knowl- 
edge and  power;  and,  thus  empowered,  he  finds 
that  he  can  the  better  serve  his  fellows. 

With  this  is  joined  the  other  truth  that  love  of 
all  the  manifold  beauties  of  things  and  beings  upon 


52  THE  MERCY  OP  HELL 

earth  is  in  its  nature  identical  with  love  of  the 
eternal  Beauty.  Many  adventures  befall  the  hero, 
both  in  dreams  and  in  reality,  and  he  is  all  the 
time  tormented  by  the  fear  that  these  lower  loves 
are  making  him  unfaithful  to  the  Goddess  to  whom 
he  has  given  his  plight.  At  last  he  falls  in  love 
with  an  Indian  maid  whom  he  finds  lost  and  for- 
saken in  the  forest,  and  vows  to  give  up  his 
heavenly  quest  for  her  sake.  But  she  cannot  ac- 
cept such  a  sacrifice,  and  they  both  plan  schemes 
of  renunciation,  she  to  be  a  votaress  and  he  to  live 
the  life  of  a  hermit.  At  the  last  moment  the  maid 
drops  her  disguise,  and  he  finds  that  she  is  none 
other  than  the  Goddess  herself.  The  quest  is 
ended,  the  mystery  solved ;  and  he  learns  that  mor- 
tal love  is  needed  to  humanize  the  heavenly,  and 
the  heavenly  to  hallow  the  mortal  —  that  the  two, 
at  their  highest  and  best,  are  one,  uniting  love  of 
God  and  love  of  man. 

This  truth  is  radiantly  expounded  by  Rupert 
Brooke,  whose  life  was  lost,  alas!  in  the  great  war, 
and  who  sleeps  amid  the  wild  thyme  and  poppies 
of  the  isle  of  Scyros.  In  his  poem  entitled  "  The 
Great  Lover,"  one  of  the  noblest  of  poems  of  re- 
cent years,  he  celebrates  with  glee  his  happy  love 
of  life  in  all  its  myriad  shapes,  regretting  that 
these  forms  of  beauty  pass  so  quickly  away,  but 
prophesying  that  from  beyond  the  hills  of  death 
he  will  still  be  singing  "  the  splendor  of  Love's 
praise,  the  pain,  the  calm,  and  the  astonishment, 


WITH  ALL  THY  HEART  53 


desire  illimitable  and  still  content."  Then  with 
all  richness  of  detail  he  tells  the  things  he  loves, 
like  an  angel  taking  an  inventory  of  heaven  — 

"White  plates  and  cups,  clean-gleaning. 
Ringed  with  blue  lines;  and  feathery,  faery  dust; 
Wet  rooms,  beneath  the  lamp-light;  the  strong  crust 
Of  friendly  bread;  and  many-tasting  food; 
Rainbows;   and  the  blue  bitter  smoke  of  wood; 
And  radiant  raindrops  crouching  in  cool  flowers; 
And   flowers   themselves,    that   sway   through   sunny   hours, 
Dreaming  of  moths  that  drink  them  under  the  moon; 
Then,  the  cool  kindliness   of  sheets,   that  soon 
Smooth  away  trouble," — 

and  on  and  on  through  a  long  list  of  things  great 
and  small,  with  many  a  phrase  that  flashes  gem- 
like in  the  sun,  teaching  us  that  love  of  life  is  love 
of  God.  Add  now  these  lines  by  St.  Augustine, 
which  move  with  the  lilt  of  a  lyric  love  of  God, 
finding  parables  of  His  presence  in  all  the  fonns 
that  life  and  beauty  take: 

*'  What  is  it  that  I  love  in  loving  Thee,  O  my 
God?  Not  corporeal  beauty,  not  the  splendor  of 
time,  nor  the  radiance  of  the  light,  so  pleasant  to 
the  eyes,  nor  the  sweet  melodies  of  songs  of  all 
kinds,  nor  the  fragrance  of  flowers,  and  ointments, 
and  spices,  not  manna  and  honey,  not  limbs  pleas- 
ant to  the  embracement  of  flesh.  I  love  not  these 
things  when  I  love  my  God ;  and  yet  I  love  a  cer- 
tain kind  of  light,  and  sound,  and  fragrance,  and 
food,  and  embracement  in  loving  God,  who  is 
light,  sound,  fragrance,  food  and  embracement  to 
my  inner  man  —  where  that  light  shineth  unto 


54  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

my  soul  which  no  place  can  contain,  where  that 
soundeth  which  time  snatcheth  not  away,  where 
there  is  fragrance  which  no  breeze  disperseth, 
where  there  is  food  which  no  eating  can  diminish, 
and  where  that  clingeth  which  no  satiety  can 
sunder.  That  is  what  I  love,  when  I  love  my 
God." 

Thus  saint  interprets  poet,  and  both  together 
show  us  that  the  varied  and  enchanting  beauty  of 
life  is  but  "  a  dome  of  many-colored  glass  which 
stains  the  bright  radiance  of  eternity."  God  be 
thanked  for  seers  who  can  bring  high  truth  within 
our  ken,  teaching  us  that  religion  and  life  are  one, 
or  neither  is  of  any  worth.  God  is  here;  eternity 
is  now.  Who  loves  the  truth  loves  God.  Who 
goes  in  quest  of  beauty  is  seeking  Him  whose  is 
the  strange  and  solemn  loveliness  of  the  world. 
Who  plights  his  vows  with  the  Ideal,  yielding 
obedience  to  its  high  behest,  is  keeping  tryst  with 
the  Infinite  Idealist  in  whom  our  visions  find  reality 
and  fulfillment.  Love  of  home  and  family,  fidel- 
ity to  our  friends,  loyalty  to  comrade  and  coun- 
try, the  care  of  a  mother  for  her  babe,  the  solici- 
tude of  a  patriot  for  his  land,  these  are  so  many 
ways  of  loving  God,  equally  with  the  rising  smoke 
of  incense  and  the  hushed  awe  of  prayer.  Life 
yields  its  meaning  only  to  those  who  love  it,  dis- 
covering the  love  of  God  and  loving  Him  in  re- 
turn. 

How  can  we  learn  to  love  God?     First  of  all, 


WITH  ALL  THY  HEART  55 


there  must  be  the  deep  wish,  the  profound  desire 
for  it,  since  it  is  our  desires  that  determine  what 
we  are,  what  we  receive,  and  what  we  achieve. 
The  little  girl  in  "The  Servant  in  the  House," 
who  wished  for  a  father,  learned  the  truth  taught 
by  Canon  Mozley  in  a  noble  sermon:  that  if  we 
wish  for  a  great  spiritual  gift,  sooner  or  later  that 
gift  will  be  ours,  provided  it  be  the  supreme  wish 
of  our  hearts.  Of  that  which  a  man  desires  in 
youth,  said  Goethe,  of  that  he  shall  have  in  age 
as  much  as  he  will,  because  all  prayers  are  an- 
swered in  the  end.  Aspiration  is  not  mocked; 
"  blessed  are  those  who  hunger  and  thirst  after 
righteousness,  for  they  shall  be  filled."  No  high 
and  true  desire  of  the  soul  fails  of  attainment,  if 
we  let  it  have  its  way  with  us,  removing  the  things 
that  hinder  and  following  its  lead.  Make  no  mis- 
take. He  who  hath  made  us  for  Himself  never 
evokes  in  us  a  desire  but  that  sooner  or  later  He 
will  satisfy  it. 

Let  us  add  to  desire  faith,  even  the  faith  that 
"  herein  is  love,  not  that  we  love  God,  but  that  He 
loved  us  and  gave  Himself  for  us."  Even  our 
longing  to  love  God  is  but  a  response  to  the  be- 
seeching love  of  God  which  wraps  us  round,  in 
sorrow  not  less  than  in  joy.  There  are  days  when 
we  feel  it  to  be  so,  days  when  life  is  an  enchant- 
ment and  death  seems  like  a  dream.  But  there 
come  other  days  when  life  is  gray  with  care,  or 
overcast  with  sorrow,  or  dark  with  sin,  and  the 


56  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

love  of  God  seems  like  a  fiction.  Every  mortal 
has  his  misgivings,  yet  we  must  rest  upon  the 
faith  that  we  love  God  because  He  first  loved  us, 
even  if  it  is  like  stepping  off  a  precipice.  At  such 
times,  as  Coleridge  urged  in  his  "  Aids  to  Reflec- 
tion," if  you  would  restore  a  truth  to  its  first 
lustre  it  must  be  translated  into  action.  Service 
can  save  our  faith  when  faith  itself  is  fading. 
Help  some  one  else,  do  it  because  God  loves  you 
and  loves  them,  and  the  sky  will  clear.  Not  by 
disputing,  said  an  old  mystic,  but  "  by  doing  will 
He  be  known,  and  by  loving." 

Once  there  lived  in  Yorkshire  a  wise  and  holy 
man  named  Richard  Rolle.  Little  is  known  of 
him,  save  that  he  was  at  Oxford  in  13 16,  and  that 
he  left  three  years  later,  wearied  or  disgusted  with 
arid  disputings,  to  live  a  solitary  life.  He  after- 
wards wrote  a  book  called  "  Incendium  Amoris," 
which  he  dedicated  not  to  philosophers  and  wise 
men  of  the  world,  nor  to  great  theologians 
wrapped  in  endless  questionings,  but  to  **  the  sim- 
ple and  untaught,  those  who  seek  to  love  God 
rather  than  to  know  many  things."  Like  all  the 
writings  of  the  mystics,  it  is  still  fresh  with  morn- 
ing dew,  unworn  by  the  passing  of  time,  and  more 
modern  than  the  latest  essay.  He  wrote  in  simple 
words,  as  such  men  always  do,  setting  down  what 
he  had  learned  by  living,  and  his  pages  are  aglow 
with  the  light  of  an  eternal  dawn.  At  times  they 
have  in  them  the  very  light  of  God : 


WITH  ALL  THY  HEART  57 

"  He  who  loves  much  is  great,  he  who  loves  less 
is  less;  for  we  are  valued  in  the  eyes  of  God  ac- 
cording to  the  love  that  is  in  us.  Love  is  a  burn- 
ing yearning  after  God,  with  a  wonderful  delight 
and  certainty.  Love  is  life,  joining  together  the 
loving  and  the  loved.  Love  makes  us  one  with 
God.  Love  is  the  beauty  of  all  virtues.  Truth 
may  be  without  love;  but  it  cannot  help  without 
it.  Love  is  perfection  of  learning,  virtue  of  proph- 
ecy, fruit  of  truth,  help  of  sacraments;  riches  of 
pure  men;  life  of  dying  men." 

What  do  we  mean  by  God  ?  IMere  power,  great- 
ness, wisdom?  If  so,  we  can  never  love  Him,  be- 
cause such  things  do  not  win  love.  Power  may 
crush  or  command ;  greatness  may  awe  or  amaze ; 
wisdom  may  confound  or  astonish.  They  cannot 
evoke  love.  If  we  are  to  love  God,  it  is  because 
He  is  love,  else  the  command  is  without  meaning. 
Since  this  is  so,  where  can  we  see  that  love  most 
clearly  revealed  in  all  its  dross-drained  purity, 
save  in  the  life  and  soul  of  Jesus?  There  Love 
itself  looked  with  human  eyes,  spake  with  human 
lips,  felt  with  a  human  heart,  shed  human  tears, 
faced  sorrow  and  death  —  walked  our  human 
way,  bringing  light  at  eventide,  and  breaking  the 
bread  of  joy!  Well  may  Rolle  pray,  "O  Lord, 
expand  my  heart,  that  it  may  become  v/ide  enough 
to  comprehend  Thy  love."  If  this  be  what  God 
is,  how  can  we  help  loving  Him  with  all  our  heart, 
and  mind,  and  soul? 


68  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

"  O  Love  divine,  that  stooped  to  share 
Our  sharpest  pang,   our  bitterest  tear, 
On  Thee  we  cast  each  earth-born  care; 
We  smile  at  pain  while  Thou  art  near." 


VI 

THE  LAMP  OF  FELLOWSHIP 

The  fellowship  of  the  mystery."— £/>/t.  3:9- 

USKIN   lighted   his   "  Seven   Lamps   of 


R 


Architecture "  and  set  them  on  golden 
_  candle-sticks,  the  better  to  show  us  that 
the  laws  of  building  are  moral  laws,  whether  they 
are  used  in  erecting  a  cathedral  or  in  making  a 
character.  If  we  would  build  for  eternity,  he  tells 
us  that  we  must  obey  Him  whose  mountain  peaks 
and  forest  aisles  we  imitate  in  our  temples.  Mar- 
tineau  lighted  five  "  Watch-Night  Lamps,"  in  his 
noble  sermon  in  Hope  Street  church,  and  urged  us 
to  keep  our  souls  awake  watching  for  the  dawn  in 
this  "  solemn  eve  of  an  eternal  day  which  we  call 
Human  Life."  May  we  not  also  light  the  great 
Lamp  of  Fellowship,  as  we  walk  together  in  a 
twilight  world  where  the  way  is  dim,  watching  for 
the  Angel  of  a  new  and  better  day? 

If  we  turn  to  the  wise  old  Bible  we  find  that  the 
word  Fellowship  lights  its  pages  from  end  to  end, 
leading  from  a  Garden  to  the  City  of  God.  The 
genius  of  the  Old  Testament  is  individual,  God 
speaking  to  patriarch  or  prophet  in  the  fellowship 

59 


60  THE  MERCY  OP  HELL 

of  revelation,  and  receiving  the  answer,  "  Here 
am  L"  The  New  Testament  knows  little  of  soli- 
tary religion.  Its  gospel  is  social,  its  philosophy 
a  friendship,  and  there  is  surely  a  mystery  in  the 
words  of  Jesus  when  He  said,  "  Where  two  or 
three  are  gathered  together  in  My  name,  there  am 
I  in  their  midst."  In  the  first  Epistle  of  St.  John, 
which  might  be  called  an  Epistle  of  Fellowship, 
we  read  these  shining  words :  "  If  we  walk  in  the 
light  as  He  is  in  the  light,  we  have  fellowship  one 
with  another."  Indeed,  one  might  sum  up  the 
whole  of  religion  in  the  word  Fellowship  —  a  deep 
and  tender  fellowship  of  the  soul  with  God,  whose 
inspiration  and  help  are  the  supreme  facts  of  life; 
and  then,  turning  manward,  filling  all  the  relations 
of  life  with  the  spirit  of  sincere  and  sympathetic 
fellowship.     Truly  it  has  been  said, 

"  Fellowship  is  heaven, 
Lack  of  fellowship  is  hell." 

Now,  the  law  of  fellowship  is  an  insight,  an  ex- 
perience, an  interest,  an  afifection  held  in  common, 
and  no  one  can  live  without  it  —  unless  he  be  like 
that  lady  in  the  story  of  "  Stamboul  Nights,"  who 
lived  alone  in  a  house  of  mirrors,  her  craving  for 
company  satisfied  by  a  thousand  reflections  of 
herself.  It  is  a  mad  world,  but,  thank  heaven,  not 
so  mad  as  that.  Normal  human  beings  have  what 
Henry  James  called  "  a  contributing  and  partici- 
pating view  of  life,"  and  that  is  the  very  genius 


THE  LAMP  OF  FELLOWSHIP  61 

of  fellowship.  Albeit  both  qualities  are  needed, 
else  the  feast  is  marred,  as  it  always  is  when  one 
tries  to  get  without  giving.  Long  of  old  the  wise 
a  Kempis  said  that  "  he  who  seeks  his  own  loses 
the  things  in  common,"  loses  even  what  he  seeks. 
Fellowship  is  a  necessity  of  artist  and  artisan,  of 
the  philosopher  not  less  than  the  saint.  Rowland 
Sill,  speaking  of  his  isolation,  wrote  to  a  friend : 
"  For  my  part  I  long  to  fall  in  with  somebody. 
This  picket  duty  is  monotonous.  I  hanker  after 
a  shoulder  on  this  side  and  on  the  other."  Our 
Yankee  poets  were  accused  of  having  a  "  mutual 
admiration  society,"  and  it  was  so.  They  sang 
more  sweetly  in  an  atmosphere  of  sympathy  and 
appreciation,  each  one  eager  to  welcome  the  work 
of  the  others.  Such  is  the  need  of  fellowship  by 
which  poets  come  in  clusters  and  the  fine  arts  travel 
in  groups,  and  it  runs  all  through  our  human 
life. 

Deep  and  passionate  is  the  hunger  of  the  mod- 
em man  for  fellowship,  each  lonely  soul  seeking 
to  escape  from  the  cell  of  self-knowledge  into  a 
larger  life.  Clubs,  cults,  guilds,  crafts,  and  fra- 
ternities without  number  betray  how  insistent  it 
is,  how  importunate.  Doors  are  closed  in  our 
face  on  every  side,  doors  of  mystery  behind  which 
those  entitled  to  enter  hold  fellowship  in  behalf 
of  trade  or  craft,  sharing  a  common  interest, 
speaking  a  common  language.  There  are  also  fel- 
lowships of  art,  of  science,  of  philosophy,  each 


62  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

having  its  mystery,  its  community  of  spirit  and 
purpose  by  which  men  are  drawn  together.  As 
Browning  said,  God  has  a  few  to  whom  He  whis- 
pers in  the  ear, 

"  The   rest  may  reason  and  welcome, 

'Tis  we  musicians  know  ;  " 

and  hence  the  fellowship  of  the  mystery  of  music. 
Slowly,  after  long  tragedy,  man  is  learning  that 
it  is  what  he  shares  that  makes  life  worth  living, 
and  that  he  who  seeks  his  selfish  gain  at  the  cost 
or  neglect  of  his  fellows  shuts  himself  up  in  a 
prison,  hiding  the  face  of  God.  Vague  it  is,  per- 
vasive as  an  air,  but  it  is  a  token  of  hope : 

"  'Tis  the  World-prayer  drawing  nearer, 
Qaiming  universal   good, 
Its  first  faint  words   sounding  clearer, 
Justice,  Freedom,  Brotherhood." 

Here,  no  less,  is  a  necessity  of  the  life  of  faith, 
and  it  i?  keenly  felt  in  our  time.  Never  were  hu- 
man bodies  so  jostled;  never  were  human  souls 
so  much  alone.  Not  only  alone,  but  timid,  shy, 
reticent,  restless  —  seeking  a  vision,  a  loyalty,  a 
power  in  common ;  seeking  but  finding  not.  Who 
does  not  feel  the  passion  and  the  pathos  of  it!  Of 
old  it  was  said,  "  Then  they  that  feared  the  Lord 
spake  often  one  to  another,"  but  it  is  not  so  among 
us.  Men  meet  as  neighbors,  or  associates,  or 
friends,  in  business  or  in  play,  and  even  in  works 
of  public  welfare,  but  as  sons  of  the  Highest,  as 


THE  LAMP  OF  FELLOWSHIP  63 


comrades  in  the  spiritual  life  with  needs  and  as- 
pirations which  the  ordinary  intercourse  does  not 
satisfy,  how  seldom.  Bunyan  tells  of  seeing  a 
group  of  poor  women  sitting  at  a  door  in  the  sun, 
talking  of  divine  things,  happy  in  their  heavenly 
gossip.  How  strange  such  a  group  would  seem 
to-day.  It  may  be  true,  as  Stevenson  said,  that  in 
a  world  of  imperfection  we  must  gladly  welcome 
even  partial  intimacies,  but  in  these  high  matters 
we  have  almost  none  at  all.  Even  in  church  life 
there  is  little  genuine  religious  fellowship,  such  as 
men  enjoyed  in  other  days.  Concerning  our  deep- 
est faith  we  are  strangely  silent,  as  if  smitten 
mute. 

No  doubt  there  are  many  reasons  why  this  is 
so.  Our  uncertainty  and  unsettlement  of  faith 
makes  us  less  sure  than  our  fathers  were,  and  less 
talkative.  There  is  also  a  fineness  of  feeling 
which  dreads  cant  and  unreality,  a  sense  of  things 
ineffable  of  which  we  may  not  speak  above  a  whis- 
per; and  such  a  reverence  is  a  sign  of  hope.  We 
remember  how  George  Eliot  was  shocked  by  a 
famous  preacher  of  her  day,  who  said,  "  Let  us 
approach  the  throne  of  grace,"  very  much  as  he 
might  have  invited  you  to  take  a  chair.  At  a 
time  when  all  Europe  was  stirred,  as  it  is  now,  by 
events  that  made  every  conscience  tremble  after 
some  great  principle  as  a  consolation  and  guide, 
he  dealt  in  poor  and  pointless  anecdotes,  his  in- 
sight seeing  "no   further  than  the  retail  Chris- 


64  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

tian's  tea.  and  muffins."  Truly,  her  stately,  grave 
and  brooding  mind  was  more  religious  than  the 
preacher  to  whom  she  listened  —  more  reverent 
as  it  was  more  profound.  Toward  the  end  she 
came  to  feel  that  fellowship  is  the  key  to  all  the 
bewildering  problems  of  life  and  religion;  that 
vaster  and  deeper  fellowship  which  emancipates  the 
soul  and  makes  the  heart  tender. 

This  sense  of  fellowship  between  God  and  man, 
between  all  ages  and  both  worlds,  it  is  the  busi- 
ness of  the  church  to  cherish  and  deepen.  Surely, 
in  an  age  so  hungry  for  fellowship  as  that  in  which 
we  live,  the  church  never  had  a  greater  opportu- 
nity, if  only  it  would  light  the  lamp  of  fellowship 
and  set  it  on  a  candle-stick  that  it  may  light  the 
house  of  life.  As  it  is,  the  church  sets  itself  to 
judge  men,  as  its  Master  never  did,  building  bar- 
riers of  creed  and  rite  to  debar  them  from  "  the 
fellowship  of  the  mystery  "  wherein  lies  their  re- 
demption. Why  should  a  man  like  Lincoln,  to 
know  whom  was  a  kind  of  religion,  be  kept  out 
of  the  church  by  its  narrow,  dogmatic,  opiniona- 
tive  attitude ?  What  is  a  church,  if  it  be  not  a  com- 
pany of  persons  seeking  harmony  with  God,  and 
who  has  a  right  to  set  up  dogmas  and  rites  to  keep 
out  any  soul  that  aspires  to  that  communion?  Not 
identity  of  opinion  about  Jesus,  His  nature,  His 
miracles,  the  way  He  came  into  the  world  or  went 
out  of  it,  but  sympathy  with  His  spirit.  His  truth. 
His  life  of  love  and  ministry,  should  be  the  basis 


THE  LAMP  OF  FELLOWSHIP  65 

of  fellowship  in  the  church  to-day,  as  it  was  in  the 
beginning. 

No  failure  of  the  church,  and  they  have  been 
many  and  tragic,  is  more  sad  than  its  fail- 
ure in  fellowship.  If  Arius  and  Athanasius 
had  been  more  brotherly,  both  had  been  nearer 
the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus.  Had  Calvin  and 
Arminius  sat  down  together  in  a  spirit  of  fellow- 
ship, they  would  have  learned  that  both  were  right, 
and  that  each  needed  the  other  to  fulfil  his  vision. 
But  no,  our  creeds  were  deliberately  set  up  to  ex- 
clude men  because  they  do  not  think  in  one  way 
and  repeat  one  form  of  words,  as  if  any  set  of 
words  could  include  the  infinity  of  truth.  As  Hi- 
ram Thomas  used  to  say,  one  man  found  an  idea 
and  built  a  church  over  it,  another  man  did  the 
same  thing.  Then  they  began  to  denounce  each 
other,  forgetting  that  in  fellowship  the  truth  is 
found  and  in  love  it  must  be  told.  Oh,  the  pity  of 
it!  What  wonder  that  the  church  has  so  little  in- 
fluence and  leadership  in  a  world  in  which  men  are 
seeking,  passionately  and  pathetically,  for  fellow- 
ship !  When  the  church  returns  to  its  first  temper, 
when  it  offers  men  what  the  first  believers  offered, 
a  union  of  those  who  love  in  the  quest  and  service 
of  the  truth,  its  great  moment  will  come  again. 
As  Brierley  said,  it  has  centuries  of  lost  time  to 
make  up,  leagues  of  wandering  to  retrace  to  get 
back  to  the  radiant  fellowship  of  its  morning 
years,  when  it  was  tormented  but  triumphant,  re- 


66  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

joicing  to  be  counted  worthy  to  be  partaker  in 
"  the  fellowship  of  His  suffering." 

Now,  think  what  we  have  left,  as  a  common 
inheritance  and  inspiration,  when  once  we  lay 
aside  the  little  things  that  divide  us,  marring  our 
fellowship  in  the  gospel.  There  is,  first  of  all, 
the  great  Book  of  the  Soul  whose  deep  and  tender 
insight  "  finds  us,"  as  Coleridge  said,  holding  a 
mirror  up  to  our  hearts,  and  showing  us  what  we 
are  in  the  light  of  eternity.  No  other  book  is  so 
honest  with  us,  none  so  merciless  in  its  merciful 
veracity,  none  so  divinely  gentle  in  its  austerity. 
Its  pages  seem  "  full  of  eyes,"  and  open  it  wher- 
ever you  may,  you  start  back  in  surprise  or  terror, 
feeling  "  this  book  knows  all  about  us ;  it  eyes  us 
meaningly;  it  is  a  discerner  of  the  thoughts  of  the 
heart."  Across  our  fitful  days  it  throws  a  white 
light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land,  and  its  leaves 
rustle  with  the  free,  original,  ancient  breath  of 
the  upper  world.  It  is  the  book  of  common 
prayer,  an  oracle  of  righteousness,  telling  us  in 
unutterable  words,  in  tales  and  whispered  his- 
tories, of  that  fellowship  of  the  soul  with  the  eter- 
nal in  which  lies  our  hope  on  earth  and  our  destiny 
beyond,  when  the  day  is  done  and  the  tent  is 
struck  in  "  the  dim  half-light  of  evening  broken 
by  homing  wings." 

There  is  the  high  office  of  the  ministry,  the 
speech  of  man  to  man  concerning  the  life  of  the 
soul,  an  oratory  of  faith.     Often  the  man  of  the 


THE  LAMP  OF  FELLOWSHIP  67 

pulpit  is  like  the  minister  in  the  weird  Hawthorne 
story  who  wore  a  thick  veil  over  his  face,  his 
muffled  words  half  audible  and  his  lips  unseen. 
But  there  are  times  when  the  veil  drops  and  soul 
speaks  face  to  face  with  soul  in  an  ineffable  sac- 
rament of  fellowship,  more  intimate,  even  in  a 
multitude,  than  the  most  private  speech.  Robert 
Hall,  in  private,  could  hardly  speak  of  religion  at 
all.  Nor  could  Alexander  Maclaren.  But  for 
both  the  pulpit  was  a  confessional,  as  it  was  with 
Phillips  Brooks.  How  strange  it  is  that  one  can 
speak  freely  in  public  of  things  too  intimate  for 
personal  converse.  Yet  so  it  is,  and  here  lies  the 
great  opportunity  and  efficacy  of  the  pulpit,  and  its 
awful  responsibility.  A  knightly  gentleman  of 
the  court  of  Queen  Elizabeth  said  to  a  young  poet, 
"  Look  into  thy  heart  and  write."  Every  man, 
in  his  highest  life,  must  in  large  measure  be  alone, 
but  if  he  looks  into  his  heart  and  speaks  of  what 
he  finds  there,  telling  what  God  has  taught  him 
in  the  silence,  others  will  listen  as  if  their  own 
souls  were  speaking. 

How  can  one  speak  of  the  sacrament  of  sweet 
song,  in  which  we  are  made  partakers  of  a  com- 
munion which  over-arches  our  little  sects  like  the 
sky,  admitting  us  unto  a  fellowship  of  ages  of 
victorious  vision  and  hope  —  those  dear,  haunt- 
ing hymns  which  hold  in  their  familiar  lines  the 
echoes  of  voices  long  hushed  ?  With  what  words 
can  one  tell  of  the  fellowship  of  prayer,  by  which 


68  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

we  are  lifted,  as  on  a  shining  Jacob  ladder,  out  of 
our  loneliness  into  the  unity  and  liberty  of  faith? 
What  most  offended  George  Eliot  in  the  popular 
preacher  to  whom  she  listened,  was  this  sentence, 
"  We  feel  no  love  to  God  because  He  hears  the 
prayers  of  others;  it  is  because  He  hears  my  pray- 
ers that  I  love  Him."  She  knew,  skeptic  though 
she  has  been  called,  that  all  true  prayer  is  com- 
mon prayer,  each  praying  for  all,  and  all  for  each 
one;  as  in  the  prayer  which  Jesus  taught  us  it  is 
"  Our  Father,  our  bread,  our  sins,"  joining  our 
hearts  with  our  poor  humanity  in  its  aspiration 
and  need.  No  one  can  forget  those  words  in 
"  Daniel  Deronda,"  which  march  like  noble  music 
and  tell  more  profound  truth  than  many  a  sermon : 

"  The  most  powerful  movement  of  feeling  with 
a  liturgy  is  the  prayer  which  seeks  for  nothing 
special,  but  is  a  yearning  to  escape  from  the  limi- 
tations of  our  own  weakness,  and  an  invocation 
of  all  Good  to  enter  and  abide  with  us,  or  else  a 
self-oblivious  lifting  up  of  gladness,  a  Gloria  in 
Excelsis  that  such  good  exists;  both  the  yearning 
and  the  exaltation  gathering  their  utmost  force 
from  the  sense  of  communion  in  a  form  which 
has  expressed  them  both  for  long  generations  of 
struggling  fellow-men." 

There  is,  besides,  a  sense  in  which  one  may  be- 
lieve for  another,  as  when  a  young  Scotchman 
said,  "  I  am  a  Christian  because  Marcus  Dods  is 
one;  "  a  vicarious  faith,  so  to  name  it,  by  which 


THE  LAMP  OF  FELLOWSHIP  69 

a  sweet  religious  soul  fortifies  and  reinforces  the 
faith  of  his  fellows.  Even  St.  Paul,  writing  to  the 
Romans,  longed  to  "  be  comforted  together  with 
you  by  the  mutual  faith  of  you  and  me."  Here, 
again,  the  office  of  the  ministry  finds  its  field. 
Never  has  that  office  been  better  described  than  in 
the  line  in  the  Tennyson  poem,  in  speaking  of  one 
of  the  knights  of  the  Round  Table:  "  He  laid  his 
mind  on  theirs,  and  they  believed  in  his  beliefs." 
Many  a  man  in  Boston  believed  in  God  because 
Phillips  Brooks  believed  in  Him.  Indeed,  a  work- 
ingman  of  that  city  wrote  to  say  that  when  he 
thought  of  God,  and  wondered  what  He  was,  it 
always  came  back  to  his  thinking  of  the  man  of 
Trinity  Church  infinitely  enlarged  in  every  way. 
What  a  tribute  both  to  the  character  of  a  man  and 
the  power  of  the  Lamp  of  Fellowship  to  kindle 
other  hearts  —  which  has  been  true  all  down  the 
ages,  as  we  may  trace  in  the  genealogy  of  our 
Christian  faith. 

Wisely  has  it  been  said  that  they  see  not  the 
clearest  who  see  all  things  clear,  and  that  is  no- 
where more  true  than  when  we  think  of  Christ. 
St.  Paul  did  not  try  to  define  Christ,  as  the  man- 
ner of  some  is,  knowing  that  when  all  is  said  He 
is  a  Mystery.  If  Arnold  could  say  of  Shake- 
speare that  he  outtops  our  knowledge,  how  much 
more  true  is  it  of  one  to  whom  St.  Paul  bowed  as 
a  mystery  unfathomable,  a  height  immeasurable, 
a  wonder  unspeakable.     What  rapture  he  had  in 


70  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

his  ministry  —  willing  to  be  all  things  to  all  men 
if  by  any  art  of  strategy  he  might  lead  them  to 
know  the  love  of  God  in  Christ,  which  passes 
knowledge!  If  only  the  church  would  follow  its 
great  evangelist,  not  seeking  to  define  Christ,  much 
less  to  defend  Him,  but  to  win  men  to  live  His 
life,  trust  His  truth,  and  follow  in  His  way,  its 
ancient  joy  would  return.  Its  life  would  be  re- 
newed and  its  sects  forgotten  in  a  fellowship  in 
which  there  is  room  for  every  type  of  mind,  heal- 
ing for  every  hurt  of  heart,  and  the  answer  to 
the  prayer  of  the  poet-preacher: 

"  Gather  us  in,  Thou  Love  that  fillest  all ! 
Gather  our  rival  faith  within  Thy  fold ! 
Rend  each  man's  temple  veil  and  bid  it  fall. 
That  we  may  know  that  Thou  hast  been  of  old ; 
Gather  us  in ! 
Gather  us  in !  we  worship  only  Thee ; 

In  varied  names  we  stretch  a  common  hand; 
In  diverse  forms  a  common  soul  we  sec: 
In  many  ships  we  seek  one  spiritland ; 
Gather  us  in  !  " 


VII 
THE  BELOVED  COMMUNITY 

"The  whole  family  in  heaven  and  earth." — Eph.  3:15. 
"  We,  who  are  many,  are  one  body." —  Rom.  12 :  5. 
"Fellow-citizens  with  the  saints." — Eph.  2:19 

IF  we  judge  a  man  by  the  depth  of  his  insight, 
the  daring  of  his  devotion,  and  the  impress 
of  his  Hfe  upon  the  race,  St.  Paul  was  one  of 
the  greatest  men  the  world  has  known.  Fragile 
of  frame,  vivid  of  mind,  and  creative  of  faith,  his 
unquenchable  passion  was  only  equalled  by  the 
profundity  of  his  thought.  The  secret  of  his  life 
lay  in  two  discoveries,  the  greatest  ever  made,  the 
discovery  of  God  and  the  discovery  of  mankind  — 
the  Love  of  God  and  the  unity  of  humanity. 
These  two  truths,  made  luminous  in  the  life  of 
Jesus,  became  the  master  lights  of  all  his  seeing 
and  the  basis  of  his  philosophy  of  history.  In 
labor  always,  in  perils  oft,  and  with  "  the  care  of 
all  the  churches,"  he  left  no  lengthy  treatise,  but 
only  letters  written  swiftly,  like  the  poems  of 
Burns,  mingling  practical  exhortation  with  spirit- 
ual exposition.  But  when  his  flashing  insights 
are  brought  together  into  a  glow-point,  they  form 
a  grand  and  far-reaching  vision. 

71 


THE  IMERCY  OF  HELL 


There  have  been  many  expositors  of  St.  Paul, 
some  of  them  among  the  noblest  thinkers  of  the 
church,  but  in  our  time  the  man  who  more  than 
all  others  revealed  the  depth  and  sweep  of  his 
vision  was  not  a  theologian.  For  some  of  us  cer- 
tain sayings  of  the  Apostle  bring  back  a  dear  and 
honored  teacher,  who  was  one  of  the  few  great 
thinkers  the  New  World  has  known,  Josiah  Royce 
—  the  sturdy  figure,  the  dome-like  forehead,  the 
starry  eyes,  and  the  voice  that  haunts  us  still.  He 
united  the  genius  of  one  of  the  most  advancing 
and  catholic  of  thinkers  with  the  simplicity  and 
spontaneity  of  a  child.  Kindness  was  the  spirit 
of  his  life.  His  service  to  the  truth  was  a  humble 
devotion,  and  he  was  equally  devoted  to  his  philos- 
ophy and  to  his  friends.  He  was  a  saint  among 
philosophers,  most  lovable  and  human,  and  was 
never  more  happy  than  when  telling  a  story  to  a 
group  of  children  —  his  favorite  being  "  The 
Hunting  of  the  Snark."  His  last  act  before  leav- 
ing for  Oxford  was  to  go  into  the  park  that  "  he 
might  say  good-by  to  his  friends,  the  little  birds, 
who  had  sung  their  songs  to  a  stranger  from  over 
the  sea."  For  his  pupils  the  memory  of  him  is 
like  music,  and  the  validity  of  his  vision  was  at- 
tested by  the  purity  of  his  character  not  less  than 
by  his  heroic  fortitude  in  those  last  dark  days. 

Such  was  the  thinker  who,  standing  midway  be- 
tween Hegel  and  James,  brought  his  insight  to  the 
service  of  faith,  setting  the  vision  of  St.  Paul  in 


THE  BELOVED  COMMUNITY  73 

the  vast  frame  of  modern  thought.  His  teach- 
ing, on  its  religious  side,  was  all  summed  up  in 
his  vision  of  the  Beloved  Community  and  his  Gos- 
pel of  Loyalty  to  its  faith  and  fellowship.  First 
he  studied  the  teachings  of  Jesus  in  the  parables 
and  in  the  sermons  by  the  sea,  finding  its  essence 
to  be  Love.  But  love,  as  Jesus  taught  it  and 
lived  it,  was  no  pale,  passive  negation  —  far  from 
it!  Instead,  it  is  active,  resolute,  heroic,  "  as  pos- 
itive and  strenuous  as  it  is  humane,"  not  only  pure 
but  purifying,  not  jam  but  a  subtle  and  vivid 
power  which  men  find  it  as  hard  to  define  as  to 
resist.  Jesus  founded  no  church,  as  we  use  the 
word,  but  a  fellowship  of  loving  hearts  to  extend 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  which  cometh  not  with 
observation,  whose  members  were  to  be  evangelists 
of  good-will,  teaching  love  to  all  men,  each  begin- 
ning with  his  neighbor.  But  this  plan,  etched  and 
left  unfinished  in  the  words  of  Jesus,  left  unsolved 
many  problems  as  to  how  it  is  to  be  worked  out  in 
respect  of  great  social  issues. 

Manifestly,  a  design  so  vast,  so  profound,  and 
so  simple  withal,  needed  a  great  mind  to  grasp  it, 
and  it  found  that  mind  in  St.  Paul.  What  did  St. 
Paul  do,  what  could  he  do,  more  than  repeat  the 
truth  of  the  Master?  Did  he  add  anything  to 
Christianity,  alter  it,  as  some  insist,  changing  it 
into  something  unlike  what  the  Master  taught,  if 
not  alien  to  it?  Not  so.  Here  the  insight  of 
Royce  went  fathoms  deeper  than  the  critics  of  St. 


74  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

Paul.  So  far  from  changing  Christianity,  St. 
Paul,  by  his  creative  insight  and  experience,  added 
to  the  truth  which  Jesus  taught,  the  truth  of  what 
Jesus  was,  and  is,  and  ever  shall  be,  made  known 
in  the  revelation  of  His  death  and  the  reality  of 
His  living  presence.  To  his  mind  —  to  his  heart 
—  a  revelation  has  been  made.  There  is  a  Be- 
loved Community  established,  a  community  of 
memory,  of  service,  of  hope,  of  interpretation. 
Its  indwelling  spirit  is  concrete  and  loving.  It  is 
the  Body  of  Christ.  The  risen  Lord  dwells  in  it, 
and  is  its  life.  It  is  as  much  a  person  as  He  was 
when  He  walked  the  earth.  Men  must  love  that 
community;  let  its  spirit,  through  their  love,  be- 
come their  own.  They  must  be  one  in  Him  and 
with  Him,  and  with  His  community  —  hence  the 
age-long,  ceaseless  evangel  to  win  men  to  this  fel- 
lowship. 

Of  course,  so  bare  a  sketch  of  the  vision  of  St. 
Paul,  as  interpreted  by  Royce,  gives  little  hint  of 
its  variegated  richness  and  splendor.  His  doctrine 
of  Interpretation  is  alone  worthy  of  long  ponder- 
ing, as  is  his  defense,  one  by  one,  of  almost  every 
truth  of  essential  evangelical  Christianity.  The 
Beloved  Community,  as  Royce  saw  it,  is  not  any 
organized  church,  but  the  invisible  fellowship  of 
loyal  souls  all  the  world  over,  past,  present  and  to 
come.  The  actuating  spirit  of  this  community  is 
Christ,  as  St.  Paul  understood  Him,  in  whom  the 
whole  body  is  compact  and  knit  together;  and  by 


THE  BELOVED  COMMUNITY  75 


that  spirit,  which  is  the  spirit  of  love,  God  is  in- 
terpreted to  every  man,  and  every  man  inter- 
preted to  himself  and  to  his  neighbor.  Royce 
regarded  the  statement,  "  I  believe  in  the  Holy 
Catholic  Church,"  as  central  in  philosophy,  as  well 
as  in  the  Christian  creed ;  but  he  gave  to  all  this  a 
meaning  which  cannot  be  used  to  support  the 
claims  of  any  sect  or  church.  His  Holy  Catholic 
Church  was  real  but  essentially  invisible,  and  for 
that  reason  he  held  aloof,  perhaps  unwisely,  from 
all  bodies,  whether  orthodox  or  otherwise,  regard- 
ing them  as  the  breeding  places  of  animosities 
which  were  opposed  to  the  religion  of  the  spirit. 
He  summed  up  his  teachings  as  to  the  fellowship 
of  love  in  two  maxims : 

"  The  first  of  our  practical  maxims  is :  Sim- 
plify your  traditional  Christology,  in  order  to  en- 
rich its  spirit.  The  name  of  Christ  has  always 
been,  for  the  Christian  believer,  the  symbol  of  the 
spirit  in  whom  the  faithful  —  that  is  to  say  the 
loyal  —  always  are  and  have  been  one.  Hold  fast 
by  that  faith.  The  simple  historical  fact  has  al- 
ways been  this,  that  in  some  fashion  and  degree, 
those  who  have  believed  in  the  being  called  Christ, 
were  united  in  a  community  of  the  faithful,  even 
in  love  with  that  community,  even  hopefully  and 
practically  devoted  to  the  cause  of  the  still  invis- 
ible, but  perfectly  real  and  divine  community,  and 
were  saved  by  the  faith  and  the  life  they  thus  ex- 
pressed. 


76  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

"  My  second  maxim  is :  Look  forward  to  the 
human  and  visible  triumph  of  no  form  of  the 
Christian  church.  Still  less  look  to  any  sect,  new 
or  old,  as  the  conqueror.  The  future  task  of  re- 
ligion is  the  task  of  inventing  and  applying  arts 
which  shall  win  men  over  to  unity,  and  which  shall 
overcome  their  original  hatefulness  by  the  gracious 
love,  not  of  mere  individuals,  but  of  communities. 
Now  such  arts  are  still  to  be  discovered.  Judge 
every  social  device,  every  proposed  reform,  every 
national  and  every  local  enterprise,  by  the  one  test : 
Does  this  help  towards  the  coming  of  the  universal 
community  ?  " 

Truly  it  is  a  grand  conception,  worthy  of  the 
faith  of  a  great  philosopher;  a  church  towering 
above  our  sects  like  a  Gothic  cathedral  above  the 
sand-house  built  by  the  little  baby  in  the  Kipling 
story.  It  recognizes  the  creative  genius  of  fellow- 
ship. It  is  a  communion,  as  Royce  held,  in  which 
socialist  and  individualist,  absolutist  and  pragmat- 
ist,  are  drawn  together  into  a  higher  harmony. 
For  our  churches,  especially,  it  is  at  once  a  test  and 
a  judgment  of  value,  since  they  exist  to  make  the 
invisible  communion  visible  —  not  by  exalting  the 
church  as  it  is,  or  by  founding  new  sects,  but  by 
winning  men  to  the  Beloved  Community. 
Whether  a  man  is  a  member  of  this  sect  or  the 
other  is  not  important,  but  whether  he  is  a  citizen 
of  that  Divine  Society  which  is  the  hope  of  hu- 
manity.    For  each  of  us,   now  and  always,  the 


THE  BELOVED  C'0:\1MUNITY  77 

great  task  is  to  aid  towards  the  coming  of  the  uni- 
versal community  by  helping  to  make  the  work  of 
religion  not  only  as  catholic,  but  as  inventive  of 
new  social  arts,  as  progressive,  as  natural  science  is 
now.  So  shall  we  help  in  the  making,  not  only  of 
happy  individuals,  but  of  a  unity  of  spirits  at  once 
free  and  loyal,  in  the  service  of  a  Society  which 
humbles  one  by  its  majesty  and  lifts  one  by  its 
fellowship. 

How  can  each  do  his  bit  in  this  behalf?  By 
simple  Loyalty,  which  in  the  vision  of  Royce  be- 
came a  Gospel  —  such  Loyalty  as  united  the  fam- 
ily, the  clan,  the  tribe,  the  nation,  exalted  and 
devoted  to  the  common  good :  "  the  willing  and 
thorough-going  devotion  of  a  self  to  a  cause,  when 
the  cause  is  something  which  unites  many  selves 
in  one,  and  which  is  therefore  the  interest  of  a 
community."  What  Socrates  meant  by  reason, 
what  Solomon  meant  by  wisdom,  St.  John  by 
love,  St.  Paul  by  grace,  Luther  by  faith, 
Fenelon  by  virtue,  Royce  meant  by  his  great 
word  Loyalty.  His  exposition  of  it  was  like  a 
musician  touching  the  keys  of  a  great  organ,  evok- 
ing elusive,  incalculable,  and  haunting  melodies; 
and  what  he  taught  in  his  words  he  revealed  in 
his  life.  To  read  his  pages,  and  still  more  to  hear 
his  voice,  so  eager,  so  eloquent,  was  to  have  a  new 
sense  of  the  greatness  of  life  when  it  devotes  the 
utmost  to  the  highest.  Also,  it  was  to  feel  the 
exaltation,  the  solemnity  and  joy  of  a  vast  fellow- 


78  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

ship  of  the  brave,  far-seeing  and  true  hearted  of 
all  ages  —  like  that  "  cloud  of  witnesses  "  which  St. 
Paul  beheld  watching  him  as  he  ran  his  race  and 
fought  for  his  faith. 

To-morrow  is  the  birthday  of  Lincoln,  a  great 
day  in  the  calendar  of  this  republic  on  which  we 
pay  homage  to  the  tallest  soul  who  has  walked  in 
this  New  World.  Wherein  was  Lincoln  great,  and 
why  does  humanity  regard  him  as  one  of  its  su- 
preme, sacrificial  spirits?  Not  because  he  was 
wiser  than  Webster  or  more  eloquent  than  Clay; 
not  because  he  had  a  larger  knowledge  or  a 
stronger  will ;  but  because  his  was  a  more  devoted 
consecration,  a  more  entire  dedication,  a  clearer 
vision  to  see  the  way  God  was  going  and  the  loy- 
alty to  walk  in  that  way.  As  we  see  him  on  the 
distant  slopes  of  fame,  all  now  know  that  the 
Union  —  the  common  good  and  the  common  des- 
tiny—  was  the  one  overmastering  idea  of  his  life, 
and  that  whoever  else  might  let  go  of  faith,  or 
sink  into  self-seeking,  or  play  fast  and  loose  with 
truth,  that  would  Lincoln  never!  He  was  loyal 
to  his  vision  of  a  great  beloved  Community,  united 
and  free,  and  willing  to  pay  "  the  last  full  measure 
of  devotion  "  in  its  behalf.  One  day  a  delegation 
of  ministers  waited  on  Lincoln  to  tell  him  his  duty, 
and  the  following  colloquy  is  reported : 

"  I  hope,  Mr.  Lincoln,  that  God  is  on  our  side," 
said  the  spokesman. 

"  That  does  not  concern  me,"  said  the  President. 


THE  BELOVED  COMMUNITY  79 

"  What,  it  does  not  concern  you  to  have  God  on 
your  side  ?  "  asked  the  minister. 

"  No,"  said  Lincoln,  "  what  concerns  me  is  that 
we  should  be  on  God's  side." 

Now  that  was  much  more  than  a  mere  play  upon 
words;  it  goes  to  the  very  heart  of  the  difference 
between  a  true  and  a  false  religion.  The  false 
view  is  that  we  have  got  something  we  want  to  do 
in  the  world,  and  we  want  the  alliance  of  the  Al- 
mighty to  help  us,  or  at  least  not  to  interfere.  The 
truer,  profounder  view  is  that  God  is  in  His  world, 
at  work  on  a  great  design,  and  that  we  must  learn 
His  v^dll  and  His  way,  and  work  with  Him,  divin- 
ing, in  the  measure  of  our  ability.  His  purpose 
and  our  duty  and  destiny.  What  is  God  doing  in 
America  to-day  ?  Has  He  put  us  here  to  build  rail- 
roads, dig  mines,  erect  bridges  ?  Is  that  all  ?  Or 
are  we  here  by  mere  chance,  each  man  to  seek  his 
own  end,  follow  his  own  path,  and  the  end  of  it  a 
moral  and  social  anarchy  ?  Or  has  He  some  great 
plan  for  our  republic,  some  purpose  to  fulfil  in 
this  new  world,  which  we  should  seek  to  know  and 
work  with?  If  so,  loyalty  to  that  Divine  purpose 
for  our  nation  is  the  only  true  patriotism,  that 
through  our  republic  we  may  the  better  serve  a  uni- 
versal humanity.  For  what  does  America  exist  if 
it  be  not  to  build  in  the  new  world  a  Beloved  Com- 
munity, united,  just  and  free,  where  men  of  every 
race  and  every  creed  may  live  and  live  well !  For 
this  our   fathers  broke  new  roads  and  kept  old 


80  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

faiths;  of  this  all  our  mountains  are  monuments 
and  all  our  sunsets  banners ! 

Once  more,  again  and  yet  again,  we  come  back 
to  the  profound  conception  of  Royce,  and  the 
deeper  vision  of  St.  Paul  which  he  expounded. 
At  first  it  looks  like  a  mere  dream,  a  divine  ro- 
mance, but,  like  the  Raphael  painting,  when  we 
look  at  it  more  closely  the  cloud  is  seen  to  be  made 
up  of  innumerable  faces.  There  shine  the  heroic 
souls  who  have  ascended  from  the  moral  battle- 
fields of  time,  many  of  them  unknown  and  unsung 
here  below.  It  is  the  one  true  eternal  Church,  one 
family  in  heaven  and  on  earth,  and  the  gates  of 
hell  cannot  prevail  against  it.  Whatever  betide, 
let  us  seek  fellowship  in  the  Beloved  Community, 
love  it,  labor  for  it,  and  be  loyal  to  it  with  a  loy- 
alty that  never  wavers  whatever  winds  may  blow. 
Our  little  systems  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be, 
but  the  fellowship  of  the  noble  and  true-hearted 
endures. 

"  O  blest  Communion,  fellowship  divine, 
We  feebly  struggle;  they  in  glory  shine, 
Yet  all  are  one  in  Thee,  for  all  are  Thine." 


VIII 
THE  AUTHORITY  OF  JESUS 

"  The  people  were  astonished  at  his  teaching,  for  he  taught 
as  one  having  authority." —  Matt.  7  :  28,  29. 

"  By  what  authority  doest  thou  these  things  ?  " —  Mark 
11:28. 

NO  doubt  my  title  to-day  is  unfortunate,  in 
that  it  may  easily  suggest  a  debated  point 
in  theology.  Whereas  it  is  no  part  of 
my  wish  to  indulge  in  any  dispute,  but  to  make 
clear,  so  far  as  in  me  lies,  the  reality  and  benignity 
of  the  authority  of  Jesus.  It  is  matter  for  deep 
regret  that  this  question  should  ever  have  been 
made  a  kind  of  puzzle.  No;  it  is  not  a  matter 
of  argument,  but  of  religious  experience.  When 
men  asked  Jesus  as  to  His  authority,  He  did  not 
answer.  He  knew  the  human  heart,  and  He  knew 
that  such  men  were  really  seeking  some  pretext  for 
getting  away  from  His  truth.  Just  so  it  is  to-day, 
and  the  effort  is  as  vain  now  as  ever  it  was  in  days 
of  old. 

Of  no  word  are  the  men  of  our  age  more  shy 
than  the  word  authority,  and  yet  they  are  always 
quoting  authorities.     Even  the  men  who,  as  Bacon 

said,  are  "  so  sensible  of  every  kind  of  restraint 

81 


82  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

that  they  go  near  to  think  their  girdles  and  garters 
to  be  bonds  and  shackles,"  take  the  facts  of  science 
on  the  authority  of  men  of  science.  There  are 
men  who  call  themselves  free-thinkers,  and  in  the 
sense  that  no  one  has  a  right  to  dictate  what  we 
should  think,  every  man  is  or  ought  to  be  free. 
It  is  like  saying  that  two  and  two  make  four. 
Nevertheless,  in  the  deeper  sense  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  free-thinker  —  unless,  indeed,  we  elect 
to  hold  as  true  only  that  which  suits  our  fancy  or 
whim.  Every  man  who  seeks  the  truth,  with  any 
hope  of  finding  it,  is  bound  by  facts  and  the  laws  of 
the  mind.  Nor  will  he  find  much  truth  if  he  is  un- 
willing to  trust  the  insight  of  deeper  minds  than 
his  own. 

Clearly,  it  is  not  the  fact  of  authority,  but  cer- 
tain kinds  of  authority,  that  men  repudiate  in  our 
day.  Let  it  be  said  at  once  that  not  one  of  the 
objections  to  authority  now  urged  has  the  least 
bearing  upon  the  authority  of  Jesus.  They  sim- 
ply do  not  touch  it.  If  we  are  to  take  Jesus  as  the 
Lord  and  Leader  of  the  soul,  it  will  be  because  He 
is  that  to  us.  No  amount  of  argument  or  evidence 
can  make  Him  so.  That  is  to  say,  the  question 
of  this  hour  is  a  question  of  fact,  and  we  must  not 
allow  it  to  be  obscured  by  raising  a  dust  about  an 
abstract  idea.  That  is  an  old  and  easy  device. 
How  strange  that  men  in  quest  of  freedom  of 
soul  should  turn  from  the  one  free  soul  in  history, 
and  the  Teacher  of  the  truth  that  makes  men  free. 


THE  AUTHORITY  OF  JESUS  83 

It  must  be  that  they  are  seeking  freedom  from 
faith,  not  freedom  of  faith.  Let  us  study  to-day 
the  fact  of  the  authority  of  Jesus,  and  the  nature 
of  it. 

Now  the  people  who  heard  Jesus  speak  in  the 
days  of  His  flesh  had  no  doubt  of  His  authority. 
They  felt  that  He  somehow  had  the  right  to  inter- 
fere with  their  personal  lives.  What  amazed  the 
people,  however,  dismayed  and  enraged  their  of- 
ficial teachers.  While  Jesus  taught  with  authority, 
the  scribes  taught  by  authorities,  a  very  dififerent 
thing.  What  He  said  the  souls  of  men  affirmed 
to  be  true;  what  they  said  needed  to  be  proved  by 
a  catena  of  references  to  the  rabbis.  Nor  is  that 
all.  Even  the  enemies  of  Jesus  did  not  deny  the 
fact  of  His  authority.  Their  very  question  was  a 
confession  of  it.  They  did  not  question  the  fact 
of  His  authority,  but  asked  to  know  the  nature  of 
it  and  who  gave  it  to  Him.  So  long  as  Jesus  lim- 
ited Himself  to  teaching  they  stood  aside  and  lis- 
tened in  a  temper  of  anger.  But  when  He  pro- 
ceeded to  act  by  driving  the  money-changers  out  of 
the  temple,  they  were  forced  to  bestir  themselves 
to  save  their  own  prestige.  Still,  so  far  from  de- 
nying His  authority,  they  only  demanded  to  know 
whence  He  had  received  it. 

No  more  can  men  to-day  deny  the  strange,  sweet 
sovereignty  of  Jesus  over  the  soul.  Often  they 
order  their  lives  in  ways  which  He  does  not  aj> 
prove,  but  they  do  so  with  a  haunting  sense  of 


84  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

moral  uneasiness.  They  may  go  on  as  though 
they  were  at  peace,  making  effort  to  be  gay  and 
forget.  But  every  man  of  us  knows  that  they  are 
not  at  peace.  They  know  all  the  time  that  it  is 
all  wrong,  and  that  they  are  acting  a  hard  part 
with  poor  success.  When  they  sit  down  to  the 
feast  of  life,  nothing  has  its  true  relish  so  long  as 
they  know  that  there  is  One  whom  they  cannot 
ask  to  sit  with  them.  There  are  those  to-day  who 
deny  that  Jesus  ever  lived.  Nevertheless,  that 
averted  Face  gives  them  a  certain  secret  trouble  of 
heart,  such  as  a  man  feels  when  he  sets  himself  to 
do  what  he  knows  is  wrong.  The  fact  is  indis- 
putable, and  the  question  before  us  is  the  same  as 
that  asked  of  old,  albeit  in  a  different  spirit:  By 
what  authority  hast  Thou  this  sway  over  our 
souls  ? 

For  one  thing,  it  is  not  the  authority  of  mere 
force.  Jesus  is  to  faith  what  art  is  to  beauty. 
He  carries  no  whip.  He  issues  no  edict.  His 
words  are  less  a  command  than  an  invitation.  He 
does  not  drive  like  a  despot ;  He  leads  like  a  lover. 
Nothing  is  more  alien  to  Him  than  to  violate  the 
liberty  of  the  soul,  or  to  invade  its  sanctity.  He 
stands  at  the  door  and  knocks.  Though  ages  have 
passed  since  He  walked  here  below,  He  is  still  here 
—  nearer,  it  often  seems,  than  in  the  days  agone. 
Without  coercing  us,  He  dominates  us.  Without 
breaking  our  wills,  He  imposes  His  wiser  and 
sweeter  will,  and  in  our  hearts  we  bow  to  it.     How 


THE  AUTHORITY  OF  JESUS  85 

can  such  a  thing  be?  All  we  know  is  that  it  is  a 
fact,  and  that  we  cannot  rid  ourselves  of  the  soft 
pressure  of  His  spirit  upon  us.  H  He  rules  it  is 
not  by  force,  but  by  the  power  of  Truth  joined  to 
an  infinite  Love.  There  is  in  His  words  a  wooing 
tone  as  of  great  music,  and  as  we  listen  our  own 
souls  seem  to  rise  up  and  rebuke  us  for  not  obey- 
ing. 

Still  less  is  it  the  authority  of  place  or  office. 
A  cathedral  is  an  embodiment  of  the  aspiration  of 
humanity,  its  altar  a  fireside  of  the  soul,  its  spire  a 
prayer  in  stone.  But  Jesus  never  taught  in  a 
cathedral.  So  far  as  we  know  He  never  entered 
the  Holy  of  Holies,  but  spoke  only  in  the  outer 
court  of  the  Temple.  He  never  ministered  at  an 
altar,  never  preached  in  a  consecrated  place.  He 
taught  in  homes,  by  the  wayside,  from  the  bow  of 
a  fishing  boat,  and  on  the  mountains.  Where  He 
was,  God  was.  It  was  not  a  matter  of  place,  but 
of  Presence.  Jesus  was  a  layman.  He  was  never 
set  apart  as  a  priest  or  rabbi.  His  dress  was  that 
of  the  people  in  their  everyday  life.  No  stately 
shrine,  no  solemn  ritual,  no  echoing  anthems,  no 
ascending  altar-smoke,  added  impressiveness  to  His 
presence  or  weight  to  His  great  and  simple  words. 

Nor  was  the  authority  of  Jesus  such  as  derives 
from  either  tradition  or  learning.  There  is  a 
sense  in  which  He  stood  in  a  shining  tradition  of 
prophetic  power  and  vision.  Yet  in  the  strict 
sense  Jesus  was  not  a  prophet,  but,  rather,  the  ful- 


86  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

filment  of  what  prophets  had  forefelt  and  fore- 
told. Tradition  as  such  had  little  weight  with 
Him.  "  It  has  been  written  —  but  I  say  unto 
you,"  were  words  often  on  His  lips,  and  always  He 
added  a  deeper,  more  searching  insight.  He  did 
something  more  than  simply  shift  the  allegiance  of 
men  from  one  master  to  another  —  even  from 
Moses  the  revered  to  Jesus  the  reviled.  No,  His 
demand  was  a  great  deal  more  drastic  than  that. 
He  transferred  the  seat  of  religious  authority  from 
zvithout  the  human  soul  to  the  secret  place  within. 
He  set  little  store  by  the  external  sanctions  to 
which  the  rabbis  appealed.  Antiquity  was  no 
authority.  He  asked  men  to  take  His  truth  to 
heart  and  test  it,  telling  them  that  if  any  man  ztnll 
do  he  shall  know.  Let  a  man  do  that  and  he  will 
hear  the  awful  echo  of  the  truth,  rising  and  falling 
like  the  sound  of  a  sunken  bell,  in  the  depths  of 
his  soul. 

As  for  learning,  we  think  of  Socrates  as  the 
prince  of  dialecticians  who  could  reduce  a  sophist 
to  a  heap  of  white  ashes  with  effortless  ease.  We 
marvel  at  the  subtle,  deep-probing  intellect  of 
Kant.  We  are  astonished  at  the  myriad-minded 
genius  of  Shakespeare,  and  the  encyclopedic  cul- 
ture of  Goethe.  Much  as  we  admire  these  men, 
something  more  than  a  fear  of  irreverence  makes 
us  shudder  at  the  thought  of  comparing  them  with 
Jesus.     Resentment  at  its  utter  incongruity  keeps 


THE  AUTHORITY  OF  JESUS  87 

us  from  doing  it.  They  tell  us  many  things  con- 
cerning which  He  was  silent;  but  in  the  deeper 
sense  of  knowledge;  in  the  knowledge  of  that 
which  matters  most,  that  which  brings  peace  and 
gives  power,  His  place  would  be  solitary  save  that 
He  lived  and  died  to  make  that  knowledge  the  sal- 
vation of  the  soul  and  the  life  of  the  race.  Not 
only  so,  but  all  of  these  noble  intellects  bowed  to 
Jesus  as  the  master  of  lore  deeper  than  they  knew, 
and  which  they  found  to  be  their  help  in  life  and 
hope  in  death. 

Once  more,  how  can  such  a  thing  be?  Why  is 
it  that,  after  reading  other  books  with  their  dim 
guesses  at  the  riddle  of  life,  when  we  turn  to  the 
words  of  Jesus  we  feel  that  here,  at  last,  is  the 
truth  about  life  and  death?  Why,  indeed,  if  it  be 
not  that  His  authority  over  us  is  due  to  a  certain 
kinship  between  what  He  is,  and  what  we,  in  spite 
of  all  things,  are  and  are  to  be  ?  In  the  nature  of 
things,  such  authority  is  measured  by  and  respon- 
sive to  the  nature  of  those  over  whom  it  is  exer- 
cised. This  law  operates  over  the  whole  arena  of 
human  life,  determining  at  once  our  comradeship 
and  our  allegiance.  He  is  what  we  want  to  be, 
long  to  be,  and  in  every  dross-drained  hour  pray 
to  be,  therefore  His  scepter  of  authority  over  us. 
He  used  no  arguments.  He  only  appealed  to  the 
heart.  He  had  no  system,  and  His  speech  is  so 
simple  that  we  forget  how  it  was  said  in  the  joy  of 


88  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

its  liberating  grace.  His  fearless  love  solves  the 
riddle  of  life,  and  His  quiet  presence  makes  us 
aware  of  God  and  the  one  way  to  Him. 

"  Who  art  Thou  ?  "  he  was  asked  of  old,  and 
His  answer  was,  "  Whom  say  ye  that  I  am?  "  It 
is  as  if  He  had  said,  looking  eagerly,  almost  wist- 
fully, into  their  hearts  for  any  sign  of  a  new^  life, 
"  Am  I  anything  to  you  ?  Have  I  made  you  ill 
at  ease  with  your  old  life?  Have  I  rebuked  the 
evil  within  you,  making  it  harder  for  you  to  do 
wrong?  Do  I  make  it  easier  for  you  to  see  the 
true  and  do  the  right?  If  so,  I  am  so  far  God  to 
you,  and  your  Saviour.  Act  loyally  on  what  I 
have  become  to  you.  Let  it  take  you  as  far  as  it 
would  like  to  take  you.  Do  I  impress  you  as  the 
Way  of  Life  and  help  you  on  toward  what  is  best? 
Do  not  stop  to  argue.  Be  obedient  to  that  inner 
impulse,  that  vision  of  truer  life  which  has  come  to 
you  through  me,  and  you  will  find  firmer  ground." 
The  only  authority  which  Jesus  claims  over  us  is 
the  authority  which  we  ourselves  are  prepared  to 
grant  Him.  Once  we  admit,  as  we  cannot  help 
doing,  that  He  has  a  place  in  our  lives,  the  door 
stands  ajar.  If  only  we  would  open  the  door  and 
let  Him  have  His  way  with  us,  the  house  of  our 
life  would  become  a  House  of  Peace. 

Jesus  has  authority  over  us,  first,  hy  virtue  of 
zvhat  He  taught.  No  wonder  the  people  felt  the 
need  of  a  scribe  no  longer.  Here  was  a  teacher 
who  did  not  prove  His  teaching,  simply  because 


THE  AUTHORITY  OF  JESUS  89 

it  needs  no  proof.  His  words  are  their  own  au- 
thority. They  have  but  to  be  heard  for  the  soul 
of  man  to  declare  them  to  be  true.  Jesus  had 
truth  for  His  authority,  and  did  not  need  any  au- 
thority for  His  truth.  Nothing  is  more  certain 
than  that  He  did  nothing  to  compel  belief.  His 
teaching  took  hold  of  men  and  mastered  them  by 
the  authority  of  Truth  itself.  Recall  the  words  of 
the  Great  Prayer,  or  such  sayings  as  these : 

*'  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  within  you. 
Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall  see 
God.  Whosoever  wants  to  save  his  life  will  lose 
it,  and  whosoever  loses  his  life  for  My  sake  shall 
find  it.  Whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should  do 
to  you,  do  ye  even  so  to  them.  A  new  command- 
ment I  give  unto  you.  That  ye  love  one  another. 
When  ye  stand  praying,  forgive." 

Those  familiar  words  ring  just  as  true  to-day  as 
when  they  were  spoken,  quietly  and  calmly,  to  the 
simple  folk  of  long  ago.  They  were  true  before 
the  pyramids  were  built.  They  will  be  true  when 
the  Sphinx  has  crumbled  to  a  heap  of  sand.  They 
do  not  need  the  name  of  Moses,  or  even  the  name 
of  Jesus,  to  endow  them  with  everlasting  authority. 
Jesus  said  them  because  they  are  true.  To  try  to 
prove  them  would  be  like  gilding  gold  or  arguing 
that  a  sunset  is  lovely.  We  may  deny  the  words 
of  Jesus,  but  we  only  hurt  ourselves.  We  may 
turn  pragmatists  and  say  that  they  will  not  work. 
It  does  not  matter.     They  are  as  true  as  the  stars 


90  THE  MERCY  OP  HELL 

in  their  orbits,  and  they  will  shine  over  the  tomb 
of  every  glib  philosophy  that  denies  them. 

Also,  Jesus  has  a  right  to  rule  over  us  by  virtue 
of  what  He  did.  When  v^e  face  the  awful  ills  of 
life,  when  we  come  near  death,  or  near  something 
which  may  be  worse,  what  helps  us  most?  Not 
exhortation,  not  theory,  not  dogma,  not  advice, 
good  as  each  of  these  may  be.  What  helps  us 
most  is  the  victory  won  in  a  like  woe  by  another 
who  has  preceded  us.  Who  fathomed  the  deepest 
depth  of  human  woe?  What  human  tragedy,  no 
matter  how  grey  and  bitter,  goes  beyond  the  Gar- 
den of  Gethsemane?  Not  even  Hamlet  would 
dare  speak  of  his  desperate  experience  in  presence 
of  that  dark  Cross  outside  the  city  gate.  Of  all 
the  deep  pages  of  Mark  Rutherford,  none  sur- 
passes that  scene  in  "  Catherine  Furze  "  where  she 
reads  the  last  three  chapters  of  Matthew  to  the 
dying  servant  girl.  When  she  came  to  the  story 
of  the  empty  tomb,  she  felt,  and  Phoebe  felt,  as 
millions  have  felt  before,  and  other  millions  will 
feel  in  times  to  be,  that  this  is  the  truth  of  death. 
Of  a  truth  Jesus  knew  the  dim  paths,  the  dark 
waters,  and  the  bitter,  old,  and  awful  reality.  Out 
of  what  He  lived  and  suffered  He  spoke,  and 
which  of  us  can  deny  His  words? 

What  He  taught,  that  He  was.  No  wonder  His 
example  has  more  authority  with  men  than  all  the 
books  of  philosophy  ever  written  by  man.  No 
wonder   the    friendless,    the   unloved,    the   disap- 


THE  AUTHORITY  OF  JESUS  91 

pointed,  the  baffled,  and  the  world-broken,  seeing 
His  pure,  calm,  heroic  image,  take  new  hold  on 
life.  That  is  why  those  who  walk  alone  in  far 
places,  those  whose  destiny  has  not  fitted  their 
dreams,  those  who  thirst  for  larger  things  but 
cannot  escape  from  their  narrow  circle,  those  who 
know  nothing-  but  dull  routine,  and  would  welcome 
death  if  it  were  for  a  cause;  lonely  souls  in  the 
obscurity  of  great  cities  or  remote  hamlets;  sinful 
souls  who  have  wandered  afar  and  lost  their  way 
—  all  these  turn  to  Him  and  find  themselves  in 
Him.  His  words  are  music,  but  His  life  and 
death  are  the  medicine  of  healing  to  their  souls. 

Again,  Jesus  speaks  with  authority  by  virtue  of 
what  He  was.  The  highest  truth  can  never  be 
wholly  uttered  in  any  form  of  words.  It  needs 
the  greater  width  of  character,  the  depth  of  per- 
sonality, the  reality  of  life.  Only  the  **  word 
made  flesh  "  can  tell  us  the  ultimate  truth  as  to 
what  life  is,  and  what  it  is  worth.  The  authority 
of  Jesus  is  that  power  of  God,  so  strangely  gentle 
and  winning,  which  inheres  in  the  purely  Good. 
As  Marius  the  Epicurean  lay  dying,  he  tried  to 
analyze  the  influence  of  Jesus  upon  the  world. 
Before  the  end  came  he  saw  that  by  His  life  there 
had  been  established  in  the  world  a  permanent  pro- 
test, a  plea,  against  any  low  or  mean  view  of  life 
we  may  be  tempted  to  take.  Like  the  boy  who 
grew  up  among  the  Alps,  and  who  afterwards  be- 
came a  great  artist.     In  every  one  of  his  paintings 


92  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

one  sees  those  far-shining  peaks,  as  if  he  saw  all 
life  against  a  background  of  the  mountains. 
Having  seen  the  life  of  Jesus,  our  humanity  can 
never  be  as  though  it  had  not  seen  it.  Over  all  the 
ages  its  towering  sublimity  holds  sway. 

Not  only  for  what  He  was,  but  also,  and  much 
more,  by  virtue  of  ivhat  He  is,  Jesus  has  authority 
over  us.  That  One  Face,  said  Browning,  so  far 
from  vanishing,  rather  grows.  Who  is  it  that 
suffers  unthin  yow  when  you  deny  or  betray  the 
highest?  Is  it  not  the  ideal  Man  that  you  are 
striving  to  make  real  —  that  pure-souled,  deep- 
hearted,  clear-visioned  Man  that  one  day,  by  the 
grace  of  God,  you  will  be?  This  ideal  Man  who 
suffers  in  you,  and  at  some  time  in  the  hearts  of 
all  men,  is  in  league  with  Him  who  was  the  Lamb 
slain  before  the  world  was,  by  whose  suffering  hu- 
manity is  emancipated  and  cleansed.  Nor  will 
you  ever  find  peace  of  heart  until  you  yield  your- 
self to  the  authority  of  that  Christ  who  is  forming 
in  you,  the  hope  of  glory. 


IX' 

CHRIST  ALL  AND  IN  ALL 

"Christ  is  all  and  in  all." — Col.  3:  11. 

THESE  words,  written  by  St.  Paul  from  his 
prison  in  Rome  when  he  was  an  old  man 
near  his  end,  show  us  a  spirit  serene,  be- 
nign and  mellow,  undaunted  by  life  and  undis- 
mayed by  death.  They  are  memorable  words, 
summing  up  what  years  of  obedience  to  the  heav- 
enly vision  had  taught  him,  making  his  experience 
a  revelation  and  his  faith  a  philosophy.  Not  only 
had  the  vision  remained  undimmed,  but  it  had  be- 
come more  radiant,  until,  at  eventide,  there  was 
light  all  round  the  sky.  It  is  therefore  that  we 
listen  to  his  words,  not  as  to  one  who  spins  a  curi- 
ous theory  or  makes  an  idle  guess,  but  one  who 
had  thought  deeply  and  lived  profoundly.  Such 
words  are  more  than  eloquent,  for  that  they  have 
within  them  the  insight  of  a  long  life  of  high, 
heroic  service,  vision-led  and  Christ-illumined. 

There  had  come  to  Rome  a  man  named  Epa- 
phras,  who  told  the  aged  Apostle  how  the  little 
church  at  Colosse  was  being  led  astray  by  wily 
teachers  of  error.     As  between  fanatical  Hebrew 

93 


94  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

literalists  and  dreamy  Oriental  occultists  the  saints 
of  that  city  were  sorely  troubled,  not  knowing 
what  to  do.  Hence  this  Epistle,  which  is  a  kind 
of  exposition  of  the  prologue  of  the  Gospel  of  St. 
John,  setting  forth  the  Eternal  Christ  as  the  image 
of  the  invisible  God  by  whom  all  things  were 
created  and  in  whom  all  things  hold  together. 
Over  against  the  legalists  who  would  petrify  faith 
into  a  form,  and  the  occultists  who  would  melt 
good  and  evil  into  a  blur,  it  unveils  Christ  as  the 
creative  ideal  of  the  universe,  the  redemptive 
reality  of  humanity,  and  the  prophetic  hope  of  the 
world.  For  depth  and  grasp  and  grandeur,  not 
less  than  for  its  portrayal  of  the  new  life  required 
of  us,  this  Epistle  has  hardly  an  equal  even  in  the 
writings  of  St.  Paul. 

Surely,  if  its  ruling  insight  can  be  made  real  and 
vivid  to  each  of  us,  commanding  the  assent  and 
homage  of  our  hearts,  the  hour  will  have  been  well 
spent.  Let  us  see  a  little.  What  kind  of  a  na- 
tion would  this  be  if  every  man  in  it  were  such  a 
man  as  Lincoln,  true  of  heart,  clear  of  mind,  living 
with  malice  toward  none  and  charity  for  all,  seek- 
ing the  sanctity  and  safety  of  the  Republic?  So- 
cial slavery  and  industrial  brutality  would  cease  to 
exist.  Laws  would  be  wise  and  just  and  merciful, 
giving  to  each  his  right  and  leaving  every  one  free 
to  stretch  his  arms  and  his  soul.  No  woman 
would  be  made  desolate,  no  little  child  forlorn,  by 


CHRIST  ALL  AND  IN  ALL  95 

grasping  greed  or  grinding  cruelty.  It  would  in- 
deed be  the  nation  it  was  meant  to  be,  conceived  in 
liberty  and  dedicated  to  the  ideal  that  all  men  are 
created  equal,  entitled  to  equal  justice  and  oppor- 
tunity for  life  and  happiness.  Because  this 
mighty  and  tender  spirit  took  form  in  Lincoln,  his 
life  was  a  revelation  of  the  genius  and  purpose  of 
the  Republic,  its  reason  for  being,  and  its  prophecy 
for  times  to  come.  Nor  will  its  mission  be  ful- 
filled till  all  men  under  its  flag  are  such  men  as 
he,  if  not  in  genius,  at  least  in  spirit  and  ideal. 

Just  so,  looking  out  over  the  far  horizons  of 
time,  St.  Paul  saw  all  the  groaning  aeons  of  nature, 
all  the  groping  ages  of  history,  moving  toward  one 
point  of  light,  one  "  far  off  Divine  event." 
Through  all  the  dim  dreams  of  centuries,  he  saw 
the  soul  of  man  pointing,  like  the  needle  of  a  com- 
pass, to  the  life  of  Christ  as  the  Divine  ideal, 
which  is  at  once  the  reason  for  the  universe  and 
the  revelation  of  its  purpose.  Like  Aristotle,  he 
saw  that  nature  is  a  realm  of  ends,  and  that  "  it  is 
the  Perfect  Man,  in  whom  the  thought  of  God  is 
clear,  who  is  the  measure  of  all  things."  Hence 
his  vision  of  Christ  as  the  crown,  the  climax,  the 
consummation  of  all  things,  the  whole  finding 
focus  in  a  single  luminous  life,  as  we  may  find 
infinity  in  a  grain  of  sand  and  eternity  in  an  hour. 
Much  else  there  may  be  in  the  majestic  infinitudes 
of  God  which  can  have  no  likeness  in  man,  how- 


96  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

ever  exalted ;  but  of  that  we  can  never  know,  since 
we  have  in  us  no  key  to  it.  But  the  quality  of 
God,  as  distinguished  from  His  quantity;  His 
spirit,  His  purpose,  His  pity,  and  most  of  all  His 
character,  without  which  His  power  is  mere  force 
—  these  are  revealed  in  the  life  of  Jesus! 

Christ,  then,  is  all  that  we  really  know  of  God, 
as  He  is  all  that  we  need  for  nobility  of  life  and 
hope  in  death;  and  if  we  lay  it  to  heart  that  the 
Divine  Ideal,  as  St.  Paul  held,  is  that  all  shall  at 
last  be  like  Him,  life  lights  up  like  an  aurora.  For 
this  nature  exists;  for  this  suns  rise  and  set,  and 
flowers  grovv^,  and  seas  dri  ft  and  sing  —  that  man 
may  realize  the  divine  dream  revealed  in  Christ! 
Such  is  the  ultimate  purpose  of  God  and  the  im- 
mortal hope  of  humanity,  but  it  could  never  come 
true  in  any  life,  much  less  in  all,  unless  the  second 
part  of  the  text  were  as  true  as  the  first.  What 
the  theologians  have  taught  of  the  uniqueness  and 
supremacy  of  Christ  is  true,  profoundly  and  glori- 
ously true.  'Tis  well  that  we  sing  it,  and  rest  in 
it,  rejoicing  in  the  measureless  promise  of  it. 
Only,  to  the  vision  of  Athanasius  and  Augustine 
we  must  add  the  insight  of  Channing  and  Emer- 
son. Christ  is  all,  but  He  is  also  in  all  —  His 
image  and  superscription  upon  every  human  soul, 
something  in  the  A'ery  nature  of  man  which  will 
not  let  him  rest  till  the  ideal  in  which  he  was 
created  is  realized.  It  must  be  so,  else  Christ 
were  not  truly  all : 


CHRIST  ALL  AND  IN  ALL  97 

"  Held  our  eyes  no  sunny  sheen, 
How  could  God's  own  light  be  seen? 
Dwelt  no  power  Divine  within  us, 
How  could  God's  divineness  win  us?" 

St.  Paul  was  a  fundamental  democrat.  He  held 
that  if  we  dig  deep  enough  into  the  nature  of  man, 
down  below  race,  rank,  sex  and  social  condition, 
below  the  debris  of  sin  and  the  sediments  of  sensu- 
ality, we  find  that  the  foundation  element  of  hu- 
manity is  the  image  of  Christ  in  the  soul.  Dim  it 
may  be.  blurred  by  evil,  and  overlaid  by  many  a 
foul  and  slimy  thing,  but  it  is  there  as  the  deepest 
reality.  Hence  his  saying  that  the  profoundest 
fact  about  humanity  is  not  that  it  is  Jew  or  Gentile, 
bond  or  free,  male  or  female,  but  that  Christ  is 
all  and  in  all.  For  St.  Paul,  a  Jew,  this  truth  was 
the  sovereign  mystery,  hidden  from  the  foundation 
of  the  world,  and  at  last  made  manifest  in  Christ. 
Hitherto  he  had  thought  the  Hebrews  the  only 
people  for  whom  God  had  any  purpose,  and  when 
he  saw  that  purpose,  as  it  unfolded,  extending  to 
all  races  and  clans,  it  filled  him  with  inextinguish- 
able wonder.  Yet  he  followed  the  truth  as  it  is 
in  Jesus,  even  against  all  his  old  prejudices,  and 
against  the  narrow  teachers  of  his  day  who  tried 
to  limit  the  Gospel  —  in  many  keys  and  tones  mak- 
ing plea  for  a  universal  Christ  as  the  savior  of  a 
universal  humanity. 

All  humanity!  Who  is  not  smitten  dumb  by 
a  vision  of  all  who  live  now,  all  who  have  ever 


98  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

lived,  all  who  are  yet  to  live  in  the  unknown  fu- 
ture! One  generation  goes  and  another  genera- 
tion comes,  myriad  following  myriad  until  we 
grow  faint  and  dizzy  at  thought  of  a  host  no  man 
can  number.  Still  they  pour  upon  the  earth,  pass 
across  it,  and  vanish  —  as  if  they  had  stepped  off 
the  edge  of  the  earth  into  an  abyss.  Some  walk 
lightly  and  gladly  along  the  old-worn  way ;  others 
trudge  slowly  and  sadly,  stooping  under  heavy 
burdens  of  care.  For  all  life  is  brief,  and  for  all 
it  seems  to  end  in  the  grave.  Whence  do  they 
come,  and  why?  Whither  do  they  go?  What  is 
their  fate?  What  is  the  meaning  of  it  all?  Has 
it  a  meaning?  Or  did  the  Great  Spirit  when  He 
took  clay  and  made  man,  play  with  it?  Only  as 
we  see  that  endless  procession  in  the  light  of  the 
Gosepl  of  Christ,  do  we  find  a  clue.  H  all  were 
created  by  God  for  sonship  to  Himself,  and  each 
for  an  inheritance  in  His  eternal  life,  then  there 
is  light  and  hope.  Such  was  the  vision  which 
filled  the  heart  of  St.  Paul  with  joy,  sending  him 
to  the  ends  of  the  earth  with  its  good  news! 

Wonderful  it  is,  towering  above  the  vague  Cos- 
mic Mysticism  of  our  day  like  a  Gothic  cathedral 
above  a  doll-house.  But  how  can  the  Infinite 
dwell  in  the  finite?  Ask,  rather,  how  it  can  be 
otherwise,  since  if  we  live  at  all  it  is  God  who  lives 
in  us,  even  as  we  live  in  Him?  Every  soul  is 
like  a  tiny  inlet  of  the  sea.  Looking  land- 
ward,    it     is     finite.     Looking     seaward,     it     is 


CHRIST  ALL  AND  IN  ALL  99 


linked  with  the  Infinite.  Time  was  when  men 
drew  two  circles ;  one  was  God,  the  other  Man,  and 
they  did  not  touch.  If  Christ  was  placed  in  one. 
He  could  not  be  in  the  other.  To-day  we  are  be- 
ginning to  see  that  those  two  circles  not  only  touch, 
but  overlap.  That  is  why,  when  we  read  the  story 
of  Jesus,  we  are  touched  to  wistfulness,  as  if  it 
were  a  history  of  the  life  we  have  dreamed.  No 
romance,  no  tale  of  old  heroism,  stirs  us  like  that 
biography  of  Love,  that  memoir  of  Mercy,  and  as 
we  read,  ere  long  we  are  praying  softly, 

"  And  oh  for  a  man  to  rise  in  me, 
That  the  man  I  am  may  cease  to  be." 

Evermore  He  haunts  us,  hovers  over  us,  because 
there  is  in  each  of  us  a  hidden,  unformed,  possible 
Christ,  an  image  of  Him  to  reveal  which  is  the 
destiny  of  all. 

Three  centuries  ago  there  was  born  in  Aber- 
deen, Scotland,  a  lad  named  Henry  Scrougall,  the 
son  of  a  bishop,  who  entered  the  University  at 
fifteen  and  was  made  Professor  of  Philosophy  at 
the  age  of  twenty.  He  died  in  1678,  when  twenty- 
eight  years  old,  leaving  only  a  tiny  book  entitled 
"The  Life  of  God  in  the  Soul  of  Man."  For 
years  I  looked  for  that  little  book,  but  was  never 
able  to  find  it  until  I  visited  the  British  Museum, 
where  I  saw  the  first  edition  and  also  an  American 
reprint  of  1868.  The  last  edition  contained  a  let- 
ter, not  found  in  the  first,  in  which  he  lamented 


100  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

that  among  so  many  pretenders  to  religion,  so  few 
understand  what  it  means.  Some  place  it,  he  said, 
in  the  understanding,  in  orthodox  notions  and 
opinions  —  he  might  have  said  liberal  notions  as 
well  —  and  all  the  account  they  can  give  of  their 
religion  is  that  they  belong  to  this  or  the  other 
sect  into  which  Christendom  is  unhappily  divided. 
Others  place  it  in  outward  rites  and  duties.  If 
they  live  peaceably  with  their  neighbors,  keep  a 
temperate  diet,  observe  the  returns  of  worship,  and 
occasionally  extend  their  hands  to  the  relief  of  the 
poor,  they  think  they  have  sufficiently  acquitted 
themselves.  Others,  again,  put  all  religion  in  the 
affections,  in  rapturous  heats  and  ecstatic  devo- 
tion; and  all  they  aim  at,  is  to  pray  with  passion, 
and  think  of  heaven  with  pleasure,  and  to  be  af- 
fected with  those  kind  and  melting  expressions 
wherewith  they  court  their  Saviour.  But  he  had 
a  deeper  insight. 

"  True  religion  is  the  union  of  the  soul  with 
God,  a  real  participation  of  the  divine  nature,  the 
very  image  of  God  drawn  upon  the  soul ;  or,  in  the 
Apostle's  phrase,  it  is  Christ  formed  within  us. 
Briefly,  I  know  not  how  the  nature  of  religion  can 
be  more  fully  expressed  than  by  calling  it  a  Divine 
Life  —  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man." 

Because  this  is  so,  because  in  each  of  us  there 
is  a  dim  image  of  Him  whom  we  follow,  no  one 
need  be  long  unaware  of  what  is  required  of  him. 
Linking  the  highest  truth  with  the  humblest  duties, 


CHRIST  ALL  AND  IN  ALL  101 

the  Apostle  urges  us  to  put  off  the  things  that 
obscure  or  mar  the  Christ-ideal  within  us,  and  to 
seek  the  things  that  are  above,  forbearing  one  an- 
other, forgiving  one  another;  and  above  all  to 
"  put  on  charity,  which  is  the  bond  of  complete- 
ness." So  interpreted,  our  life  is  like  that  figure 
carved  by  Polasek  to  symbolize  the  work  of  a  man 
in  forming  his  own  personality  —  a  huge  giant 
imprisoned  in  a  stone,  his  head  and  hands  free, 
laboriously  setting  himself  free  by  chipping  away 
the  stone.  If  that  which  we  have  of  God  within 
ourselves  by  nature,  or  to  which  we  can  by  our 
own  efforts  attain,  is  not  adequate  —  and  it  is  in- 
adequate, as  all  know  —  He  whose  we  are  and 
whose  image  lives  in  us,  will  enlighten  and  inspire 
us  by  His  grace.  By  yielding  to  His  spirit,  by 
making  His  will  our  own,  our  desires  are  deeper, 
our  tastes  finer,  our  love  purer,  our  vision  clearer, 
and  His  gentleness  and  strength  dwell  in  us,  shap- 
ing our  lives  after  His  image  and  ideal. 

There  remains  the  great  prophetic  hope.  If 
Christ  is  indeed  all  and  in  all,  if  His  image  is  im- 
pressed upon  every  soul,  however  marred  it  may  be, 
then  let  us  not  fear  to  follow  where  this  faith 
points.  If  this  be  so,  sometime,  somewhere,  some- 
how, by  the  love  of  God  which  hath  in  it  the  secret 
of  unknown  redemptions,  that  ideal  will  be  real- 
ized. Ages  of  imperfection  lie  behind,  and  other 
ages  may  lie  ahead,  but  the  dream  of  God  will 
come   true  at   last.     He  who  purposed   through 


102  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

Christ  to  reconcile  the  race  unto  Himself,  will  not 
fail,  cannot  fail.  If  God  be  God  His  dream  will 
not  end  in  defeat.  The  infinite  is  His  realm,  eter- 
nity His  work-day,  and  stronger  is  His  love  than 
earth  or  hell.  Tennyson  touched  the  deep  springs 
of  this  forward-looking  faith  when  he  wrote, 

"  The  wish  that  of  the  living  whole 
No  life  may  fail  beyond  the  grave, 
Derives  it  not  from  what  we  have, 
The  likest  God  within  the  soul?" 

Even  so,  Christ  in  us  is  the  basis  of  our  faith 
for  to-day,  not  less  than  of  our  hope  for  "  to-mor- 
row, to-morrow,  and  to-morrow."  Finally,  after 
aeons  of  effort,  by  the  wise  strategy  of  the  love 
that  will  not  let  us  go,  humanity  will  be  brought, 
not  blindly,  not  by  force  impelled,  but  freely, 
gladly,  surely,  to  the  ideal  of  Him  who  created 
it  in  love  and  holiness ;  and  God  will  be  all  and  in 
all. 


X 

ANOTHER  CHRIST 

"He  appeared  unto  them  in  another  iorm."—Mark  i6:  12. 

OF  all  pages  in  the  Bible,  whose  leaves  are 
for  the  healing  of  the  nations,  none  is 
more  fascinating  to  me,  none  more  re- 
vealing, than  the  story  of  the  walk  to  Emmaus. 
It  is  an  epitome  of  Christian  history  and  experi- 
ence. There  we  have  the  three  things  that  make 
our  life  worth  while:  the  Divine  Companion,  the 
sufficient  interpretation,  and  the  mighty  answer  of 
the  heart.  Nowhere  else  do  we  see  more  plainly 
the  sundering  difference  between  the  Bible  and 
all  other  books  that  speak  to  man  about  things 
eternal.  Rich,  warm,  ineffably  beautiful,  the 
Bible  is  the  Book  of  the  Presence. 

This  is  clear,  whatever  else  be  dim :  since  Jesus 
lived  our  human  life  has  been  a  walk  to  Emmaus, 
often  lonely  and  sad,  but  haunted  by  a  high  and 
tender  Presence.  Since  that  day  One  has  walked 
with  us  whom  we  knew  not,  prophecies  have  had 
new  and  deeper  meanings,  and  the  eventide  has 
been  full  of  serenity  and  light.  Since  then  the 
heart  of  man  has  burned  within  him  along  the  old 

103 


104  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

worn  human  way,  touched  with  strange  stirrings 
of  beauty  and  of  love.  Here  is  a  mighty  mystical 
reality  which  no  man  may  fathom,  as  incompre- 
hensible as  life  itself,  but  which  lends  a  glory  to 
the  world.  Writing  of  "  The  Truth  of  Religion," 
Eucken  speaks  of  it  in  the  measured  words  of 
philosophy : 

"  The  personality  of  Jesus  was  the  turning  point 
of  religion.  It  was  He  who  brought  forth  the 
Christian  standard  of  living,  which  has  made  all 
previous  standards  totally  inadequate.  In  Him 
we  saw  a  human  career  of  the  most  homely  and 
simple  kind,  passed  in  a  remote  corner  of  the 
world,  little  heeded  by  his  contemporaries,  and, 
after  a  brief  blossoming  of  life,  cruelly  put  to 
death.  Yet  that  life  had  an  energy  of  spirit  which 
filled  it  to  the  brim,  it  had  a  standard  which  has 
transformed  human  existence  to  its  very  root,  it 
has  made  inadequate  what  hitherto  seemed  to  bring 
entire  happiness.  It  holds  us  fast  and  refuses  to 
be  weakened  by  us,  even  when  all  the  dogmas  of 
the  church  are  seen  to  be  of  human  origin." 

Let  us  lay  aside  all  dogmas  and  look  at  the  fact 
which  sets  Jesus  apart  from  every  other  teacher 
the  world  has  known.  If  you  would  know  the 
difference,  take  down  the  biography  of  any  of  the 
superlative  leaders  of  the  race  and  read  it.  Take 
the  noble  book  of  Plato  in  which  he  describes  the 
farewell  of  Socrates  to  his  friends.  It  is  beauti- 
ful, tragic,  pathetic,  winsome.     But  not  once  does 


ANOTHER  CHRIST  105 

Socrates  suggest  that  when  he  has  left  his  dis- 
ciples he  will  remain  with  them,  a  personal  at- 
tendant spirit.  When  we  open  the  Gospel  story 
we  seem  to  be  in  another  world.  Jesus  tells  His 
followers  that  His  body  is  withdrawn  that  He  may 
be  with  them  more  intimately  in  spirit,  not  as  a 
memory  but  as  a  living  Presence.  And  that  prom- 
ise was  fulfilled.  Not  only  did  He  exalt  and  re- 
deem men  in  the  days  of  His  flesh,  but  He  con- 
tinues to  do  so  — 

"  And  by  the  vision  splendid, 
We  are  on  our  way  attended." 

Death,  so  far  from  destroying  Jesus,  revealed 
His  real  nature  and  power.  The  pilgrim  Peasant 
became,  at  its  touch,  the  mystical  and  eternal 
Christ  whose  unfinished  life  slowly  shapes  the 
world.  Here  is  the  mighty  reality  with  which  we 
have  to  do,  transforming  human  life  and  giving 
a  new  date  to  history —  its  depth  no  more  wonder- 
ful than  its  many-sided  manifestation.  When  we 
read  the  Epistle  of  James  we  see  that  reality  in 
what  Hume  called  "  the  dry  light  "  of  reason  and 
practical  common  sense.  James  is  the  father  of 
all  such  as  worship  the  goddess  of  reason.  For 
him,  as  for  Emerson,  Jesus  is  the  way  to  God 
solely  on  account  of  the  virility  of  His  teaching. 
No  doubt  he  would  agree  with  our  Yankee  Plato 
that  the  church  has  erred  in  magnifying  the  Man 
until  all  others  are  dwarfed  by  His  side,  instead  of 


106  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

laying  emphasis  on  His  words  and  His  beautiful, 
sweet  character.  At  least,  one  would  almost  infer 
as  much  from  reading  his  Epistle. 

Turning  to  the  Epistles  of  Paul  we  find  another 
Christ.  He  practically  ignores  the  life-history  of 
Jesus  as  of  little  moment  in  comparison  with  the 
overwhelming  fact  of  His  expiatory  death.  Save 
"  in  the  spirit,"  St.  Paul  did  not  know  Jesus,  hav- 
ing seen  Him  in  a  luminous  vision  at  noonday. 
He  tells  us  nothing  of  a  miraculous  birth,  nothing 
of  His  miracles  of  mercy,  and  scarcely  anything 
of  His  wonderful  teaching.  No,  the  Cross  is  cen- 
tral, creative,  and  prophetic  in  his  thinking.  That 
tragedy  disclosed  to  him  the  exceeding  sinfulness 
of  sin  and  the  mighty  passion  of  God  to  reconcile 
the  race  to  Himself.  Again,  if  we  open  the  Gospel 
of  John  we  meet  another  Christ  —  the  eternal 
Reason  wearing  the  form  of  man,  the  creative 
Word  made  fiesh.  There  is  that  Light  which 
lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world, 
with  which,  if  a  man  identify  himself  by  humility 
and  sacrifice,  he  rises  into  fellowship  with  God. 

Each  of  these  visions  is  true,  but  no  one  of 
them  is  the  whole  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus.  Some- 
how one  feels  that  the  reality  of  Christ  lies  too 
deep  to  be  fathomed  by  any  one  of  these  plummets, 
and  where  there  are  so  many  good  things  to  choose 
between  it  is  wisest  to  take  all  of  them  together. 
What  was  true  in  the  apostolic  church  has  been 
true  all  down  the  ages.     No  one  teacher  has  fath- 


ANOTHER  CHRIST  107 

omed  the  riches  of  truth  in  Christ,  no  one  theology 
has  exhausted  it.  If  we  read  the  "  Didache,"  a 
manual  issued  about  forty  years  after  the  death  of 
St.  Paul,  we  would  hardly  know  that  Jesus  had 
ever  been  crucified.  Even  Marcion,  albeit  a  great 
Paulinist,  gave  an  entirely  different  interpretation 
of  the  death  of  Jesus.  He  held  that  the  death  of 
Jesus  overthrew  the  reign  of  Jehovah  and  brought 
in  the  reign  of  mercy  and  forgiveness,  and  his  fol- 
lowers were  godly  people  distinguished  by  a  purity 
of  life  almost  ascetic. 

St.  Augustine  was  the  Shakespeare  of  Christian 
theology,  and  he  has  left  a  record  of  his  experience 
in  his  "  Confessions  " —  one  of  the  great  classics  of 
the  world.  There  we  follow  him  through  a  way- 
ward, faultful  youth,  until  his  awakening,  and 
then  we  witness  his  struggle  to  break  the  cords  of 
sensuality  that  bound  him.  He  was  like  the  habit- 
stained,  morally  broken  Nevarga  in  the  Kingsley 
story,  entitled  "  Yeast."  Feeling  utterly  defiled, 
the  poor  man  knelt  in  a  desert  of  furze  bush,  and 
lifted  his  heart  to  God :  '*  Then  I  spoke  right  out 
into  the  dumb,  black  air,  and  said,  *  If  Thou  wilt 
be  my  God,  good  Lord  who  died  for  me,  I  will  be 
Thine,  dirty  as  I  am,  if  Thou  canst  make  anything 
of  me.'  "  Naturally  that  deep  and  revealing  ex- 
perience colored  all  his  thinking,  and  out  of  the 
depths  he  brought  the  most  precious  truth  to  light. 
Yet  even  that  experience  did  not  fathom  the  re- 
deeming reality  of  Christ. 


108  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

Clement  of  Alexandria  knew  not  the  wild  pas- 
sions which  swept  Augustine  away  into  the  mire. 
He  was  a  scholar  nurtured  in  Greek  philosophy 
and  literature,  and  a  certain  innate  purity  of  na- 
ture kept  him  unpolluted  by  the  evils  of  his  age. 
He  was  a  restless,  wide-ranging  thinker  who 
craved  for  some  solution  of  the  dark  problems 
which  haunt  the  intellect,  and,  like  Browning,  he 
found  the  solution  in  Christ.  If  for  Augustine 
Jesus  was  the  Saviour  and  Cleanser  of  the  soul,  for 
Clement  He  was  the  Light  and  Teacher  of  truth. 
Passing  to  Francis  of  Assisi,  with  his  life  of  beauty 
and  pity,  we  meet  another  Christ.  Meeting  a  leper 
by  the  wayside,  he  saw  in  that  forlorn  figure  the 
image  of  Christ,  and  kissed  Him.  For  Francis, 
the  life  of  Jesus  was  a  vision  of  the  world  as  love 
and  comradeship,  of  purity,  pity,  and  gladness, 
and  in  that  vision  he  went  singing  through  his  days 
—  a  figure  to  haunt  and  bless  the  world  till  time 
shall  be  no  more. 

To  Nicholas  Herman  —  known  in  religion  as 
Brother  Lawrence  of  the  Resurrection  —  Christ 
appeared  in  another  form.  For  thirty  years  he 
was  a  cook  in  a  Carmelite  kitchen,  and  a  wiser, 
sweeter,  whiter  soul  has  seldom  lived  upon  this 
earth.  Women,  take  notice!  Here  was  a  man 
who  did  your  work,  and  who,  amid  the  din  and 
heat  and  litter  of  his  drudgery,  won  the  high  prize 
of  sainthood.  His  whole  life  was  "  a  practice  of 
the  Presence  of  Christ,"  and  his  purity  of  life  and 


ANOTHER  CHRIST  109 

charity  of  labor  were  the  fruits  of  it.  Happily 
he  left  us  the  story  of  his  heart,  and  the  path 
marked  out  by  his  soul  into  the  Holy  Place.  To 
John  Woolman  the  Quaker  Jesus  appeared  in  an- 
other form  —  as  the  infinite,  ineffable  Pity  at  the 
heart  of  this  dark  world,  which  alone  is  sufficient 
for  the  infinite  pathos  of  human  life.  Upon  his 
tender  heart  the  weary  weight  of  the  misery  of  the 
world  lay  like  a  mountain  of  lead.  Without  Christ 
he  would  have  been  crushed;  with  Him  he  was 
victor. 

For  St.  Phillips  Brooks  the  life  of  Jesus  was  the 
sovereign  beauty  of  the  world.  The  spirit  of  his 
mind  was  the  spirit  of  beauty ;  its  depths  were  the 
depths  of  beauty.  It  was  as  a  great  artist  that  he 
thought  of  God,  of  Christ,  and  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven.  Thus  we  might  go  from  soul  to  soul 
along  the  Christian  highway,  and  in  each  one  find 
a  new  wonder,  an  unspeakable  beauty  —  in  each 
another  Christ,  yet  always  the  same  reality  taking 
myriad  forms.  What  is  this  Reality  which  men 
call  Christ?  There  are  those  who  talk  of  the 
Divinity  of  Christ,  and  others  of  His  Deity,  as  if 
the  two  were  somehow  different.  Let  us,  for  once, 
have  none  of  this  quibbling  about  words,  since 
all  words  are  inadequate,  if  so  that  we  may  get  to 
the  heart  of  this  matter.  The  truth  with  which 
we  have  to  do  is  not  a  metaphysical  proposition; 
it  is  a  spiritual  reality.  Perhaps  we  can  best  make 
it  clear  by  asking  our  hearts  one  question. 


no  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

What  is  it  that  we  worship?  Is  it  mere  Power? 
No!  Power  may  awe  us,  crush  us,  command  us, 
but  never  yet  has  it  won  the  worship  of  the  heart. 
Is  it  knowledge?  No!  An  infinite  Intellect  may 
invite  admiration,  but  we  do  not  worship  Wisdom. 
Is  it  Vastness?  Not  so!  Read  the  Tennyson 
poems  on  "  Vastness  "  and  you  will  see  how  a  cold, 
bare  infinitude,  so  far  from  winning  the  love  of 
man,  strikes  him  dumb  with  terror.  What,  then, 
do  we  worship?  Reverently  let  us  say  that, 
though  God  speak  with  the  tongues  of  lightning, 
though  He  have  all  power  so  that  He  could  remove 
mountains  or  hurl  suns  into  space,  yea,  though  He 
have  all  knowledge  and  understand  all  mysteries, 
and  have  not  Love,  we  cannot  worship  Him.  Only 
Love  can  win  love,  and  if  God  be  not  Infinite  Love 
we  cannot  love  Him,  albeit  we  may  cower  before 
Him,  trembling  and  afraid.  Love,  only  Love  — 
Love,  infinitely  vast  —  that  is  what  our  own  hearts 
tell  us  to  seek  till  we  find  and  trust  unto  the  utter- 
most. 

What,  then,  do  we  worship  when  in  a  mood 
dross-drained  and  exalting  the  heart  has  its  way? 
Think  it  all  through,  up  one  side  and  down  the 
other,  and  you  will  find  that  our  ideal,  our  dream, 
our  hope,  that  to  which  we  pray,  is  no  other  than 
the  Spirit  that  lived  in  Jesus,  shone  in  His  face, 
wrought  in  His  works,  and  spoke  in  His  words. 
If,  when  we  look  out  upon  the  universe,  now  lucid 
and  lovely,  now  dark  and  terrible,  we  can  trust 


ANOTHER  CHRIST  111 

the  future,  even  as  a  little  child,  it  is  because  we 
can  trust  that  Spirit.  The  Spirit  of  Jesus  in  its 
strength,  its  gentleness,  its  august  and  awful  hu- 
mility, its  incredible  patience,  its  fathomless  pity, 
its  relentless  love,  its  all-forgiving  mercy,  its  vic- 
torious valor,  its  purity,  its  gladness  —  that  is 
what  is  meant  by  the  Deity  of  Jesus,  not  that  He 
had  unlimited  knowledge,  or  power,  but  that  the 
fullness  of  God,  who  is  Love,  dwelt  in  Him.  Be- 
yond that  Love  it  is  not  possible  for  any  man  to 
imagine  anything  more  Divine.  The  Spirit  of 
Jesus  is  the  ultimate  Divine  Reality  so  far  as  we 
can  know  it,  or  need  to  know  it. 

Where  that  Spirit  of  Love  is,  there  God  is. 
Because  it  lived  in  Jesus  in  its  fullness,  its  rich- 
ness, its  unclouded  beauty,  He  is  the  supreme  reve- 
lation of  what  God  is.  This  it  was  that  redeemed 
Augustine  from  his  sin,  satisfied  Clement  in  his 
perplexity,  gave  such  unearthly  luster  to  the  life 
of  Francis,  and  lifted  the  weight  of  woe  from  the 
soul  of  Woolman.  Profound  beyond  thought, 
rich  beyond  measure,  it  takes  myriad  shapes,  mani- 
festing its  infinite  variety  of  beauty.  St.  Paul 
reached  this  Reality  through  his  vision  of  vicarious 
suffering,  St.  John  through  his  thought  of  the  in- 
carnation. One  man  is  practical  and  builds  his 
faith  on  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount;  another  is 
speculative,  and  comes  to  Christ  through  far-reach- 
ing ideas;  while  still  another  is  mystical,  and  en- 
ters into  the  mystery  by  meditation  and  prayer. 


112  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

Yet  it  is  ever  the  same  Reality,  and  it  is  fellowship 
with  Him  as  He  actually  is  that  saves  us,  healing 
our  wounds,  cleansing  our  stains,  and  comforting 
our  hearts. 

As  there  have  been  many  visions  of  the  Reality 
we  call  Christ  in  the  past,  each  age  interpreting 
it  in  the  light  of  its  best  and  highest  life,  so  there 
will  be  many  others  in  days  to  come.  It  matters 
not  that  in  our  age  the  skies  have  been  pushed  back 
and  the  awful  depths  of  the  universe  revealed  — 
the  Divine  Reality  abides.  No  doubt  incalculable 
changes  of  thought  await  us,  with  many  recon- 
structions of  civilization,  but,  as  Goethe  said,  we 
can  never  get  beyond  the  Spirit  of  Jesus.  Deeper 
truth  it  is  not  given  us  to  see  in  the  dim  country 
of  this  world;  higher  Reality  we  do  not  need  to 
know.  If  the  social  passion  of  our  age  gives  us 
another  Christ,  it  will  be  only  one  more  aspect  of 
the  Eternal  Christ  who  is  "  the  same  yesterday,  to- 
day, and  forever." 

The  same  Yesterday  —  that  is,  through  all  the 
dark,  mysterious  past,  the  old  backward  and  abysm 
of  time,  out  of  which  the  race  has  climbed.  That 
is  the  key  to  the  philosophy  of  evolution.  The 
same  To-day  —  despite  the  wide  weltering  chaos  of 
a  world-shaking  war,  with  its  blood  and  fire  and 
tears.  That  is  our  only  hope  in  these  times  that 
try  the  faith,  aye,  and  the  very  souls  of  men  — 
that  slowly,  tragically,  yet  surely,  the  Spirit  of 
Jesus  will  soften  the  hearts  of  men  and  heal  the 


ANOTHER  CHRIST  113 

old  hurt  and  heartache  of  humanity.  The  same 
Forever  —  in  all  the  unfathomed  deeps  and  des- 
tinies that  lie  before  us,  through  unknown  revolu- 
tions and  overturnings,  until  whatever  is  to  be  the 
end  of  things.  There  is  nothing  in  history,  dark 
as  much  of  it  is,  against  the  assurance  that  the 
Spirit  of  Jesus  w^ill  yet  triumph  over  all  ignorance, 
injustice,  and  uncleanness. 

"  When  the  last  clay  is  ended, 

And  the  nights  are  through ; 
When  the  sun  lies  buried 

In  its  grave  of  blue ; 
When    the    stars    are    snuffed   like    candles, 

And  the  seas  no  longer  fret ; 
When   the   winds   unlearn   their  cunning. 

And  the   storms   forget ; 
When  the  last  lip  is  palsied, 

And  the  last  prayer  said; 
Love  will  reign  immortal. 

While  the  worlds  lie  dead." 


XI 

THE  MASTER  BOOK 

"  From  a  child  thou  hast  known  the  holy  scriptures." — 
2  Tim.  3  :  15. 

TIME  is  a  river  and  books  are  boats. 
Many  volumes  have  started  down  the 
stream  of  years  only  to  be  wrecked  and 
buried  forever  in  its  sands.  Few  indeed  are  the 
books  that  live  out  a  single  century.  Here,  as  in 
all  else,  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  applies, 
and  there  is  no  critic  so  terrible  as  Time.  No 
book  lives  save  as  it  tells  of  that  in  the  life  of  man 
which  grows  not  old  and  fades  not  away.  Homer 
lives  not  simply  for  his  art,  but  for  his  story  of 
great  adventure,  his  pictures  of  man  and  woman, 
of  love  and  joy  and  death  in  the  days  when  life 
was  new.  Vergil  lives  not  only  because  he  fash- 
ioned some  of  the  noblest  lines  ever  molded  by 
mortal  lips,  but  because  he  sings  of  the  wayfaring 
of  the  soul  in  a  far-off,  unreturning  past.  Human 
things,  not  less  than  Divine  things,  never  die. 

Our  Bible  is  not  a  Book,  but  a  Divine  Library, 
as  St.  Jerome  called  it  so  long  ago.     It  is  not  the 

record  of  one  mind  or  of  one  age,  but  of  many 

115 


116  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

minds  covering  a  long  stretch  of  time  —  the  his- 
tory of  the  Hfe  of  a  people  having  a  genius  for 
religion  as  the  Greeks  had  a  genius  for  art  and 
philosophy,  and  as  the  Romans  had  a  genius  for 
jurisprudence.  Other  nations  had  sacred  books  as 
a  part  of  their  literatures,  but  the  literature  of  the 
Hebrews  was  wholly  religious.  The  ruling  trait 
of  that  race  was  its  sense  of  the  Unseen,  its  vision 
of  the  moral  law,  its  passion  for  God.  Here  was 
a  folk  whose  government  was  a  theocracy,  and 
whose  patriotism  was  piety.  Their  poetry  kindled 
its  flame  at  the  altar  of  faith.  Their  architecture 
was  a  House  of  Prayer.  The  Muse  of  their  His- 
tory was  the  Spirit  of  Holiness.  Surely  it  is  not 
a  thing  strange  that  the  poets  of  such  a  people  be- 
came prophets,  their  faces  aglow  with  moral  ideal- 
ism, their  lips  speaking  words  of  fire.  Nor  is  it 
a  matter  of  wonder  that  the  most  religious  race 
in  all  history  should  have  written  the  sacred 
book  of  mankind,  the  moral  classic  of  the 
world. 

One  may  say,  reverently,  that  the  life  of  Jesus, 
so  far  as  we  can  understand  it,  was  the  consum- 
mate flower  of  the  piteous,  passionate,  aspiring  life 
of  that  mighty  race  —  just  as  Plato  was  the 
crowning  glory  of  a  race  of  thinkers.  On  His 
human  side  Jesus  was  surely  the  focus,  the  glow- 
point,  at  which  the  God-inspired  soul  of  His  peo- 
ple, melted  by  sorrow  and  purified  by  fire,  became 
incandescent  with  heavenly  light.     It  was  as  if  the 


THE  MASTER  BOOK  117 


scattered  atoms  of  an  old  chaos  had  at  last  been 
gathered  into  a  planet  —  yea,  a  Sun  to  light  our 
dark  world;  as  if  the  wandering  tones  of  many 
harps  had  found  a  home  in  the  bosom  of  one  sov- 
ereign Harmony.  This  does  not  account  for 
Christ,  but  it  does  help  us  to  mark  the  path  by 
which  He  came  and  the  tradition  in  which  He 
stood.  It  is  only  to  say  that  God  appeared  to  a 
race  that  had  eyes  to  see,  and  spoke  to  men  who  had 
ears  to  hear. 

The  land  of  the  Bible  is  an  enduring  commen- 
tary on  a  Book  which  has  in  it  the  rugged  gran- 
deur of  a  work  of  nature.  It  is  a  tiny  land,  shut 
in  on  two  sides  by  deserts,  and  on  the  other  sides 
by  mountain  and  sea;  a  rough  and  broken  land 
where  shaggy,  thunder-split  hills  enclose  narrow 
valleys,  and  beauty  sits  on  the  brow  of  barrenness ; 
of  mutable  climate  and  varying  moods;  lorded 
over  by  blazing  suns  and  deep  lucid  nights ;  a  land 
ever  in  extremes  —  now  dried  up  as  in  a  furnace, 
now  flooded  with  loud  waters.  An  isolated  land, 
with  the  Dead  Sea  at  the  south  and  snowy  moun- 
tains at  the  north,  yet  it  was  a  highway  of  trade 
and  the  battlefield  of  rival  empires,  its  history  a 
long-drawn  tragedy  of  war  and  pillage  and  sor- 
row. The  Bible  is  a  mirror  of  its  motherland, 
alike  of  its  history  and  its  scenery,  where  suns  rise 
in  beauty  and  set  in  splendor,  and  rivers  flow,  and 
flowers  bloom,  and  lightnings  rush  like  angry  paint- 
ers across  the  sky.     As  Emerson  said: 


118  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

"  Out  from  the  heart  of  nature  rolled 
The  burdens  of  the  Bible  old ; 
The  litanies  of  nations  came, 
Like   the   volcano's   tongue  of   flame. 
Up   from   the  burning  core  below  — 
The  canticles  of  love  and  woe." 

Open  the  Bible  where  you  will,  and  the  first 
impression  is  that  of  vastness.  It  has  in  it  the 
curve  of  the  earth  and  the  arch  of  the  sky.  Great 
and  wide  like  the  world,  it  is  rooted  in  the  abyss 
of  creation  and  rises  into  the  blue  mysteries  of 
heaven.  There  are  continents  of  truth,  seas  of 
mystery,  rivers  flowing  from  invisible  springs,  val- 
leys rich  with  harvest,  marshes  of  melancholy, 
depths  sombre  and  sunless,  and  mountains  that 
pierce  the  clouds.  It  is  a  world  of  reality  and 
fact,  a  world  in  which  men  live  and  love,  and  sin 
and  suffer,  and  hope  and  die,  in  the  sight  of  the 
sun.  It  is  the  world  as  God  made  it,  and  is  mak- 
ing it,  with  Divine  power  in  His  forces,  Divine 
order  in  its  ongoings,  and  Divine  purpose  in  its 
end.  This  book  has  four  characters  in  it,  God 
and  Man,  the  sky  and  the  dirt.  It  has  in  it  the 
strength  and  massive  grandeur  of  elemental 
things,  and  no  one  can  read  it  aright  without  feel- 
ing that  he  is  in  the  presence  of  the  big,  eternal 
meanings  of  life. 

The  Bible  is  not  a  book  of  philosophy.  It  does 
not  argue.  It  is  a  Book  of  Vision  whose  story 
moves  between  two  mighty  seers  —  Moses,  whose 
vision  brooded  over  the  dark  chaos  of  old,  whence 


THE  MASTER  BOOK  119 

order  and  beauty  emerged,  and  St.  John,  whose 
insight  forecast  in  solemn  apocalypse  the  final  is- 
sue of  man  and  the  world.  What  a  history  it 
recites !  It  begins  at  the  beginning,  with  the  wan- 
dering shepherds  and  wayfarers  in  the  dim  morn- 
ing of  time.  We  see  the  rise  of  the  home  and  the 
family,  of  the  tribe  and  the  nation ;  a  race  passing 
through  slavery  into  the  vestibule  of  civilized  life; 
the  gradual  building  of  a  rich  and  complex  social 
order;  its  prosperity,  its  splendor,  its  testing  time, 
and  its  final  fall,  "  because  it  knew  not  the  time  of 
its  visitation."  The  story  begins  in  a  Garden  and 
ends  in  the  coming  of  the  City  of  God,  where  there 
is  no  sadness  nor  weeping,  and  the  whole  is  set 
against  a  majestic  background  of  eternity  —  birth 
and  death,  promise  and  fulfilment,  victory  and  de- 
feat, all  the  drama  of  humanity  in  the  presence  of 
God. 

As  one  reads  there  comes  a  shock  of  surprise 
that  the.  essentials  of  human  nature,  its  joys  and 
woes  and  upward-leaping  hopes,  remain  seemingly 
unaltered  by  all  the  vicissitudes  of  time  and  change. 
Across  the  rise  and  fall  of  nations,  over  the  fever- 
ish life  of  groping  generations  long  since  vanished, 
there  sounds  the  unchanging  music  of  faith  and 
hope,  of  love  and  loss  and  longing.  In  a  remote 
story  of  a  Moabite  girl  —  a  page  let  fall  from 
an  old  picture  of  life,  as  if  by  accident  —  men  and 
women  find  to-day  the  one  perfect  expression  of 
undying  affection :     "  Where  thou  goest  I  will  go ; 


120  THE  MERCY  OF  HEIX 

and  where  thou  lodgest  I  will  lodge;  thy  people 
shall  be  my  people,  thy  God  my  God.  Where 
thou  diest  I  will  die,  and  there  will  I  be  buried ; 
the  Lord  do  so  to  me  and  more  also,  if  aught  but 
death  part  me  from  thee."  In  a  record  of  fierce 
tribal  war,  amidst  scenes  of  cunning  and  barbaric 
vengeance,  we  hear  the  most  musical  of  all  laments 
of  friendship  —  the  living  for  the  dead :  "  I  am 
distressed  for  thee,  my  brother  Jonathan;  very 
pleasant  hast  thou  been  to  me ;  thy  love  for  me  was 
wonderful,  passing  the  love  of  woman."  An  un- 
dated drama  of  the  desert,  full  of  its  wide  spaces 
and  awful  questionings  —  a  book  mysterious  and 
magnificent  which  has  drawn  the  deepest  minds 
to  its  study  —  gives  voice  to  a  plaintive  cry  which 
not  time  nor  fortune  has  modified :  "  As  the 
waters  fail  from  the  sea,  and  the  flood  decayeth 
and  drieth  up;  so  man  lieth  down  and  riseth  not; 
till  the  heavens  be  no  more;  they  shall  not  wake, 
nor  be  raised  out  of  their  sleep." 

Here,  in  this  splendid  spacious  Book,  one  finds 
every  variety  of  thought  and  mood  and  feeling, 
from  a  biting  skepticism  to  a  death-defying  faith, 
from  a  sob  of  despair  to  a  shout  of  ecstasy.  It 
contains  passages  of  the  boldest  denial  —  impeach- 
ments of  the  beneficence  of  God  more  fierce  than 
any  in  the  choruses  of  Swinburne  —  and  an  ag- 
nosticism more  ultimate  than  even  that  of  Omar 
the  Tentmaker,  without  his  scent  and  sheen  of  the 
flesh.     A  bit  of  sensuous  love  poetry  is  set  side 


THE  MASTER  BOOK  121 

by  side  with  the  most  bitter  and  shattering  pes- 
simism, crying  Hke  the  wail  of  chill  winds  in  a 
deserted  city.  Here  are  prayers  that  have  wings, 
and  songs  of  the  victory  of  faith  over  death  and 
time;  confessions  that  lay  bare  the  soul  of  man; 
pilgrim  hymns;  elegies  portraying  the  majesty  of 
God  and  the  fleetingness  of  man;  prophecies  that 
flash  the  future  in  their  mirrors.  On  the  music 
marches  until,  at  last,  there  breaks  into  it  the 
sweetest  voice  that  man  has  ever  heard,  whose 
words  are  the  truth  about  life,  and  whose  tones 
evoke  melodies  that  echo  forever. 

At  sundry  times  and  in  divers  manners  this 
music  is  heard,  like  a  great  organ  with  myriad 
keys  on  which  a  Master  plays.  In  the  Bible  there 
is  almost  every  form  of  literary  art  —  history, 
poetry,  drama,  fiction,  biography,  letters,  lyrics, 
elegies,  epics,  epigrams,  proverbs,  parables,  alle- 
gories, and  the  dreams  of  apocalyptic  seers.  John 
was  a  mystic,  Ezekiel  a  divine  dreamer,  David  a 
lyric  poet,  and  Solomon  a  kind  of  Biblical  Benja- 
min Franklin.  Each  has  his  own  imagery  and 
thought,  his  own  tone  and  style,  but  the  whole  is 
united  by  one  spirit,  one  passion,  one  hunger  for 
eternity.  As  men  come  to  know  the  laws  of  great 
literature,  how  it  grows  and  how  it  is  interpreted, 
the  variety  and  sublimity  of  the  Bible  will  be  un- 
veiled. They  will  hush  their  debates  and  listen 
to  its  far-sounding.  Divine  cadences,  many-toned 
and  melting,  knowing  that  a  Book  which  grew  out 


122  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

of  a  profound  morality  and  a  lofty  spiritual  life, 
if  rightly  used  and  obeyed,  will  produce  in  us,  in- 
fallibly, the  kind  of  life  which  produced  it.  They 
will  know  that  it  is  inspired  because  it  inspires 
them,  revealing  heights  and  depths  unguessed  be- 
fore—  heights  where  the  Infinite  woos  the  finite 
into  its  mystery,  and  the  depths  where  men  find 
the  heart  of  the  world.  It  was  not  a  Christian 
scholar,  but  a  skeptic  famous  for  his  stinging  wit 
—  Heine,  whose  poetry  is  a  blended  smile,  tear 
and  sneer  —  who  wrote  these  words : 

"  What  a  Book !  Stranger  still  than  its  con- 
tents is  for  me  its  style,  in  which  every  word  is, 
so  to  speak,  a  product  of  nature,  like  a  tree,  a 
flower,  like  the  sea,  the  stars,  like  man  himself. 
One  does  not  know  how,  one  does  not  know  why, 
one  finds  it  altogether  quite  natural.  In  Homer, 
the  other  great  book,  the  style  is  a  product  of  art, 
and  the  material  always,  as  in  the  Bible,  is  taken 
from  reality,  yet  it  shapes  itself  into  a  poetic  form 
as  though  recast  in  the  melting  pot  of  the  human 
spirit.  In  the  Bible  there  is  not  the  least  trace  of 
art ;  it  is  the  style  of  a  memorandum  book  in  which 
the  Absolute  Spirit  entered  the  daily  incident  with 
the  same  actual  truthfulness  with  which  we  write 
our  washing  list." 

Some  have  denied  that  the  Bible  is  an  unveiling 
of  the  Divine  nature,  but  no  one  doubts  that  it  is 
a  revelation  of  human  nature.  Here  is  a  book 
that  knows  man,  the  road  whence  he  came  and 


THE  MASTER  BOOK  123 

what  is  in  his  heart.  It  finds  us,  as  Coleridge 
said,  strips  us  to  the  soul,  and  makes  us  see  as  in 
a  mirror  what  manner  of  men  we  really  are.  No 
other  book  is  so  candid  with  us,  so  honest,  so 
stem,  so  tender,  so  mercilessly  merciful  in  its 
searchings  of  the  strange  soul  within  us.  No  man 
can  stand  before  it  and  have  any  vanity  left  in  him. 
It  knows  our  innermost,  secret  sin  —  the  lust  that 
defiles,  the  passion  that  sears,  the  envy  that  gnaws, 
the  pride  that  is  foolishness.  Righteousness  is  its 
one  great  word  —  righteousness  in  God  demand- 
ing righteousness  in  man.  It  teaches,  as  does  all 
great  tragedy  from  Euripides  to  Shakespeare,  the 
iron  law  of  destiny  —  the  sowing  and  reaping  of 
sin.  But  in  the  Bible  this  law  is  suffused  with  a 
vast  tenderness,  as  if  to  show  that  it  is  a  law  of 
love.  The  moral  earnestness  of  this  Book  makes 
one  tremble,  as  its  ineffable  pity  makes  one  weep. 
No  other  book  has  in  it  such  a  blend  of  charity 
and  rebuke.  The  mercy  of  God  is  in  it,  and  He 
remembers  that  we  are  dust  —  hence  its  voice  of 
many  thunders  and  its  whisper  as  of  a  mother  over 
her  child. 

In  other  books  we  see  humanity  struggling  up- 
ward, building  a  Tower  of  Babel ;  in  the  Bible  we 
feel  that  something  comes  down  to  man,  as  at 
Pentecost.  It  moves  under  a  whispering  sky. 
All  who  read  it  know  that  our  human  life  is  from 
above  downward,  and  that  our  help  is  from  God. 
Other  books  have  rafters  and  a  roof.     The  Bible 


124  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

has  none.  In  Shakespeare  the  unseen  world  ap- 
pears in  weird  ghosts  or  flitting  witches,  as  a  thing 
uncanny  and  dreadful.  Not  so  in  the  Bible.  The 
subtle  air  of  eternity  blows  through  it,  like  the 
sweet  winds  that  wander  over  the  meadows.  It 
talks  of  the  eternal  world  with  a  simple  artless 
faith,  as  a  child  talks  of  the  stars,  as  if  heaven 
were  as  real  as  is  earth,  and  as  natural.  It  makes 
us  know  that  God  is  here,  that  eternity  is  now, 
that  life  has  ageless  fellowships  —  that  every  truth 
is  full  of  Divine  mystery,  and  every  day  charged 
with  unknown,  immortal  meanings. 

Hence  there  is  a  power  in  this  master  Book  not 
found  in  any  other  —  a  power  of  faith,  a  sense  of 
unseen  reality,  which  makes  men  broad  of  mind 
and  tall  of  soul.  Look  into  the  life  of  Gladstone, 
with  his  fine  moral  idealism,  or  into  the  life  of 
Lincoln,  with  his  cool  sanity  and  his  stern  but 
delicate  justice,  and  you  will  learn  that  they  drew 
much  of  their  strength  from  the  Bible.  It  is  no 
wonder  that  the  prophetic  eloquence  of  Lincoln 
echoes  with  Bible  music,  as  do  so  many  great  pas- 
sages of  our  literature  —  like  that  noble  page  in 
the  "  School  of  Saints,"  like  that  forest  scene  in 
"Westward  Ho!"  like  that  unforgettable  refrain 
in  Thackeray  when  Henry  Esmond  returns  from 
the  wars.  Oh,  let  us  take  this  wise  old  Book  to  our 
hearts,  and  not  only  love  it  but  live  with  it,  mak- 
ing it  the  prophet  of  our  inner  life,  lest  the  faith 
that  makes  us  men  be  crushed  by  the  tramp  of 


THE  MASTER  BOOK  125 

heavy  years.  If  we  use  it  wisely,  we  may  com- 
mune with  those  in  whom  God  dwelt,  even  as  He 
dwells  in  us,  albeit  we  do  not  yet  know  Him  whom 
to  know  aright  is  life  eternal. 

All  men  feel,  at  times,  an  oppressive  sense  of 
human  insignificance.  Millions  of  men  lived  here 
upon  this  earth  before  us,  and  have  vanished.  We 
do  not  know  their  names.  Like  us,  they  were  pil- 
grims and  had  to  pass  on.  Soon  we  must  follow 
along  the  same  beaten  path  into  the  common  ob- 
livion, and  our  footsteps  will  be  trodden  out  by 
the  oncoming  multitude.  It  is  in  the  midst  of 
meditations  such  as  these  that  the  dear  old  Bible 
brings  us  its  sweetest  message.  It  fills  us  with  a 
sense  of  the  dignity  of  the  human  personality,  its 
sacredness,  and  its  august  destiny.  It  tells  us  that 
our  little  lives,  brief,  broken  and  frail  as  they  are, 
have  a  meaning  for  God ;  that  death  is  not  the  end 
of  all,  but  that  beyond  its  shadow  there  hovers  and 
waits  a  larger  life.  It  maizes  life  worth  while  and 
opens  gates  of  wonder.  God  be  thanked  for  a 
Book  which  knows  so  much  of  the  weakness  of 
man,  his  wickedness  and  his  waywardness,  and  yet 
holds  up  so  high  an  ideal  and  so  grand  a  hope. 

But  there  is  something  else  in  the  Bible  —  a 
quality  so  delicate,  so  elusive,  and  yet  so  strong, 
which  no  words  may  ever  hope  to  capture  or  de- 
fine. We  call  it  spirituality,  a  hallowing  spirit,  an 
indwelling  presence,  which  gives  to  this  book  a 
nameless   and   inefifable   power   and   charm.     We 


126  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

know  what  it  is;  we  feel  it;  it  rises  from  the  page 
like  a  perfume  —  but  no  one  can  put  it  into  words. 
Religion  is  a  Divine  life,  not  a  Divine  science,  and 
life  cannot  be  turned  into  a  book.  The  worth  of 
the  Bible  is  the  witness  it  bears  to  the  reality  of 
God,  its  testimony  that  He  is  found  of  those  who 
seek  Him,  and  that  he  lives  in  the  souls  of  men. 
As  such  it  is  a  symbol  of  a  Book  greater  than  itself 
—  the  volume  of  the  Faith  of  Man,  the  Book  of  the 
Will  of  God  as  humanity  has  learned  it  in  the 
midst  of  the  years  —  which  Lowell  had  in  mind 
when  he  wrote : 

"  Slowly  the  Bible  of  the  race  is  writ, 
And  not  on  paper   leaves  nor  leaves  of  stone; 
Each  age,  each  kindred,  adds  a  verse  to  it. 
Texts  of  despair  or  hope,  of  joy  or  moan. 
While  swings  the  sea,  while  mists  the  mountains  shroud, 
While  thunder's  surges  burst  on  cliffs  of  cloud. 
Still  at  the  prophet's  feet  the  nations  sit." 

Books  are  transient  and  will  pass  away. 
Homer,  Sophocles,  Dante,  Shakespeare,  and  the 
Bible  itself,  are  all  doomed.  When  time  is  done 
they  are  done.  But  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of 
man  can  never  die.  It  will  live  when  the  globe 
itself,  and  all  which  it  inherits,  shall  dissolve  like  a 
dream  and  leave  not  a  rack  behind.  Of  that  eter- 
nal life  the  Bible  bears  witness  in  words  the  sim- 
plest, the  deepest,  the  sanest,  the  truest  and  the 
sweetest  that  man  has  heard  in  his  long  journey, 
and  it  is  therefore  that  we  love  it. 


XII 

THE  SUPREMACY  OF  THE  BIBLE 


MY  subject  takes  it  to  be  a  fact  that  the 
Bible  is  the  one  supreme  book  of  the 
world.  And  so  it  is.  Argument  is  un- 
necessary ;  the  fact  proves  it.  No  one  denies  it  who 
has  any  regard  at  all  either  for  the  witness  of  his- 
tory or  for  the  realities  of  life.  As  Seeley  said, 
the  greatest  work  of  individual  literary  genius 
shows  by  the  side  of  the  Bible  like  some  building 
of  human  hands  beside  the  peak  of  Teneriffe.  With 
this  let  us  join  the  words  of  Scherer,  written  out 
of  the  depths  of  his  skepticism,  "  If  there  is  any- 
thing certain  in  the  world  it  is  that  the  destiny  of 
the  Bible  is  linked  with  the  destiny  of  holiness  on 
earth."  Not  only  was  the  Bible  the  loom  on  which 
our  own  language  was  woven,  but  it  has  a  place 
equally  in  the  history  and  the  heart  of  mankind 
which  no  other  book  may  ever  hope  to  have. 

Even  those  who  have  assailed  the  Bible  have 
seldom,  if  ever,  assailed  the  book  itself,  but  nearly 
always  some  dogma  about  the  Bible.  By  the  same 
token,  those  who  defend  the  Bible  more  often  de- 

127 


128  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

fend  some  theory  about  it,  forgetting  that  the  fate 
of  the  Bible  is  not  bound  up  with  the  fortunes  of 
any  dogma  as  to  its  origin,  infallibility,  or  author- 
ity. There  is  no  need  that  anyone  defend  the 
Bible.  It  is  the  Bible  that  defends  us  from  the 
besieging  vanities  of  life,  from  the  rude  cynicism 
of  the  world,  from  the  lusts  of  flesh  and  the  fear 
of  the  grave.  What  men  need  to  do  is  to  be  still 
and  listen  to  its  great  and  simple  words,  telling  the 
story  of  God  and  the  Soul  and  their  eternal  life  to- 
gether; and  whoso  does  that  will  know  what  poor 
Heine  meant  when  he  wrote  these  words  from 
what  he  called  his  mattress  grave : 

"  I  attribute  my  enlightenment  entirely  and  sim- 
ply to  the  reading  of  a  book.  Of  a  book!  Yes, 
and  it  is  an  old  honest  book,  modest  as  nature, 
modest  as  the  sun  which  warms  us,  as  the  bread 
which  nourishes  us,  a  book  as  full  of  love  and 
blessing  as  the  old  mother  who  reads  it  with  her 
dear,  trembling  lips;  and  this  book  is  the  Bible. 
With  right  it  is  named  the  Holy  Scriptures.  He 
who  has  lost  his  God  can  find  Him  again  in  this 
book;  and  he  who  has  never  known  Him  is  here 
struck  by  the  breath  of  the  Divine  Word." 

Because  this  is  so,  because  the  Bible  is  so  much 
wiser  than  its  defenders,  what  is  here  said  of  its 
unique  supremacy  is  by  way  of  illustration,  not  in 
proof  of  my  thesis.  If  we  contrast  the  Bible  with 
other  venerated  writings,  we  find  that  it  stands 
alone  and  apart,  very  unlike  the  Upanishads,  the 


THE  SUPREMACY  OF  THE  BIBLE     129 


Zend-Avesta  and  the  Koran,  not  only  because  it  is 
so  much  more  practical,  so  much  less  speculative, 
so  rich  and  varied  in  its  music;  but  because  it 
shows  us,  more  clearly  than  any  other,  the  growth 
of  man  in  his  knowledge  of  God,  of  himself,  of 
good  and  evil,  of  law  and  love  and  truth.  In  fact, 
it  is  a  Book  of  Life,  not  a  mere  record  of  intellec- 
tual speculation  about  life,  and  as  a  man  reads  it 
he  sees,  as  in  a  mirror,  the  history  of  his  own  soul. 
Moreover,  it  comes  to  us  from  a  time  when  man 
saw  the  big  meanings  of  life  with  a  freshness 
of  insight,  a  directness  unobscured  by  passage 
through  media  that  blur  and  confuse,  without 
learned  subtleties  and  those  ingenious  concealments 
which  rob  us  of  reality.  Written  before  life  was 
"  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought,"  it  has 
a  vividness,  a  vitality,  a  sanity,  an  artless  simplic- 
ity, and  a  lucidity  as  of  the  morning  light,  not  to 
be  found  anywhere  else. 

Thirty  years  ago  a  great  savant  characterized 
the  Bible  as  a  collection  of  the  rude  imaginings  of 
Syria,  the  worn-out  bottle  of  Judaism  into  which 
the  generous  new  wine  of  science  was  being 
poured.  No  doubt  he  was  angry  when  he  said  so, 
else  he  would  not  have  said  a  thing  so  foolish. 
Whereupon  the  noblest  literary  critic  of  our  day 
stated  once  for  all  the  reason  why,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  literature  alone,  the  Bible  lives  and  will 
live  when  we  and  all  those  now  upon  the  earth 
have  fallen  into  dust.     He  said : 


130  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 


"  The  new  wine  of  science  is  a  generous  vintage, 
undoubtedly,  and  deserves  all  the  respect  it  gets 
from  us;  so  do  those  who  make  it  and  serve  it 
out;  they  have  so  much  intelligence;  they  are  so 
honest  and  fearless.  But  whatever  may  become  of 
their  new  wine  in  a  few  years  when  the  wine- 
dealers  shall  have  passed  away,  when  the  savant 
is  forgotten  as  any  star-gazer  of  Chaldea  —  the 
*  old  bottle  '  is  going  to  be  older  yet  —  the  Bible  is 
going  to  be  eternal.  For  that  which  decides  the 
vitality  of  any  book  is  precisely  that  which  decides 
the  value  of  any  human  soul  —  not  the  knowledge 
it  contains,  but  simply  the  attitude  it  assumes  to- 
ward the  universe,  unseen  as  well  as  seen.  The 
attitude  of  the  Bible  is  just  that  which  every  soul 
must,  in  its  highest  and  truest  moods,  always  as- 
sume —  that  of  a  wise  wonder  in  front  of  such  a 
universe  as  this  —  that  of  a  noble  humility  before 
a  God  such  as  '  He  in  whose  hand  we  stand.'  That 
is  why  —  like  that  precious  Cup  of  Jemshid,  imag- 
ined by  the  Persians — the  Bible  reflects  to-day 
and  will  reflect  forever,  every  wave  of  human  emo- 
tion, every  passing  event  of  human  life  —  reflects 
them  as  faithfully  as  it  did  to  the  great  and  simple 
people  in  whose  great  and  simple  tongue 
it  was  written.  Coming  from  the  heart  of 
man  it  goes  straight  to  the  heart.  This  is  the  kind 
of  literature  that  never  does  die;  a  fact  which  the 
world  has  discovered  long  ago." 

Here  the  point  is  that,  as  a  record  of  human  life 


THE  SUPREMACY  OF  THE  BIBLE     131 

in  the  gray  years  of  old,  and  apart  from  its  divine 
revelation,  the  Bible  belongs  to  the  things  immor- 
tal, and  will  live  while  human  nature  is  the  same. 
Consider  for  a  moment  this  fact,  established  as  it 
is  by  the  terrible  testing  of  time,  and  you  will  see 
why  all  attacks  on  the  Bible  fail,  and  why  any  de- 
fense of  it  is  unnecessary.  Our  great  critic  —  it 
is  Watts-Dunton,  if  you  would  know  his  name  — 
proceeds  to  discuss  the  style  of  the  Bible,  which  he 
calls  the  "  great  style,"  more  easily  recognized  than 
defined,  but  which  he  ventures  to  define  as  uncon- 
scious power  blended  with  unconscious  grace. 
This  style,  so  august  in  its  simplicity  and  truthful- 
ness, allows  a  writer  to  touch  upon  any  subject 
with  no  risk  of  defilement,  because  it  tells  the  thing 
as  it  is  with  a  clarity  which  leaves  no  suggestion 
of  evil.  Also,  whensoever  this  style  is  attained, 
it  moves  with  the  rhythm  of  life  itself,  lifting  us 
into  a  realm  where  a  thousand  years  are  as  a  day, 
and  where  a  whisper  echoes  forever.  That  is  why 
the  heart-cry  of  an  exile  in  old  Babylon,  or  an  echo 
of  an  hour  of  prayer  in  the  hills  of  Judea,  lives  and 
speaks  to  the  heart  of  man  to-day,  as  if  time  were 
a  fiction.     As  we  may  read : 

"  Now  the  great  features  of  Bible  rhythm  are  a 
recognized  music  apart  from  a  recognized  law  — 
*  artifice '  so  completely  abandoned  that  we  forget 
we  are  in  the  realm  of  art  —  pauses  so  divinely  set 
that  they  seem  to  be  *  wood-notes  wild  ' —  though 
all  the  while  they  are,  and  must  be,  governed  by  a 


132  THE  MERCY  OF  HEIX 

mysterious  law  too  subtly  sweet  to  be  formulated ; 
and  all  kinds  of  beauties  infinitely  beyond  the  tri- 
umphs of  the  metricist,  but  beauties  that  are  unex- 
pected. There  is  a  metre,  to  be  sure,  but  it  is  that 
of  the  *  moving  music  which  is  life;  '  it  is  the  living 
metre  of  the  surging  sea  within  the  soul  of  him 
who  speaks.  And  if  this  is  so  in  other  parts  of 
the  Bible,  what  is  it  in  the  Psalms,  where  the  flam- 
ing steeds  of  song,  though  really  kept  strongly  in 
hand,  seem  to  run  reinless  as  the  wild  horses  of 
the  wind !  " 

II 

Let  me  illustrate  a  little,  if  only  to  show  how 
high  the  simplest  words  of  the  Bible  tower  above 
the  loftiest  peaks  of  poetry,  as  the  Alps  out-top  the 
masonry  of  man.  Take  the  eulogy  of  man  which 
Shakespeare  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Hamlet,  and 
which  has  been  called  the  point  where  the  master 
poet  raised  prose  to  the  sublimest  pitch  of  verse. 
The  words  are  familiar : 

"  That  goodly  frame,  the  earth,  seems  to  me  a 
sterile  promontory ;  this  most  excellent  canopy,  the 
air,  look  you,  this  brave  o'erhanging  firmament, 
this  majestical  roof  fretted  with  golden  fire,  it  ap- 
pears no  other  thing  to  me  than  a  foul  and  pestilent 
congregation  of  vapors.  What  a  piece  of  work 
is  man!  how  noble  in  reason!  how  infinite  in  fac- 
ulty ;  in  form  and  moving  how  express  and  admir- 
able; in  action  how  like  an  angel;  in  apprehension 


THE  SUPREMACY  OF  THE  BIBLE     133 

how  like  a  god;  the  beauty  of  the  world;  the  para- 
gon of  animals." 

There  is  the  rich  and  fluent  style  of  the  spacious 
days  of  Elizabeth  —  ornate,  apostrophic,  brilliant. 
Here  is  wonder  indeed,  albeit  not  that  "  wise  won- 
der "  in  front  of  a  universe  now  luminous  and 
lovely,  now  dark  and  terrible,  of  which  our  critic 
speaks.  Nor  do  we  find  here  that  noble  humility 
before  Him  in  whose  great  hand  we  stand.  How 
much  deeper  and  truer,  how  much  more  faithful 
to  reality  are  these  lines  from  the  eighth  Psalm  on 
exactly  the  same  theme;  how  noble  they  are  in 
their  stripped  simplicity,  how  chaste  and  moving 
their  music,  touched  with  that  haunting  pathos 
which  one  hears  in  all  Bible  melody : 

"  When  I  consider  Thy  heavens,  the  work  of 
Thy  fingers,  the  moon  and  the  stars  which  Thou 
hast  ordained,  what  is  man,  that  Thou  art  mindful 
of  him?  and  the  son  of  man,  that  Thou  visitest 
him  ?  Thou  hast  made  him  but  a  little  lower  than 
the  angels,  and  hast  crowned  him  with  glory  and 
honor.  Thou  hast  made  him  to  have  dominion 
over  the  works  of  Thy  hands;  Thou  hast  put  all 
things  under  his  feet;  all  sheep  and  oxen,  yea,  and 
the  beasts  of  the  field ;  the  fowls  of  the  air,  and  the 
fish  of  the  sea,  and  whatsoever  passeth  through  the 
paths  of  the  seas." 

Surely  it  is  something  more  than  old  association 
which  makes  the  sundering  difference  between 
these  two  passages.     How  tawdry  and  high-flown 


134  THE  MERCY  OP  HELL 

the  one  seems  alongside  the  grave  and  simple  trtith- 
fulness  of  the  other;  how  world-far  they  are  apart 
in  their  attitude  toward  the  life  of  man  and  his 
place  in  the  order  of  the  world.  Both  celebrate 
the  dignity  of  man,  but  in  what  different  ways, 
against  what  different  backgrounds;  one  under  a 
roof  fretted  with  golden  fire,  the  other  under  a  sky 
that  has  no  roof  nor  rafter;  one  as  if  man  were  a 
kind  of  god  exiled  on  a  sterile  promontory,  the 
other  full  of  wonder  that  God  is  even  mindful  of 
a  being  so  fragile  and  fleeting.  The  difference  is 
fundamental,  and  it  justifies  the  saying  of  Newman 
that  in  the  Bible,  and  most  of  all  in  the  Gospels, 
there  is  a  manifestation  of  the  divine  so  special  as 
to  make  it  appear,  from  the  contrast,  as  if  nothing 
were  known  of  God  where  the  Bible  is  unknown. 
Of  course  this  is  not  true,  for  God  has  not  left 
Himself  without  witnesses  in  any  land  or  age ;  but 
if  anyone  would  feel  the  full  force  of  the  fact,  let 
him  take  any  book  known  to  man,  even  the  great- 
est, and  read  it  alongside  the  Bible. 

Of  the  influence  of  the  Bible  on  civilization 
much  has  been  written,  but  the  story  has  never  and 
can  never  be  told.  Even  as  far  back  as  the  days 
of  Chrysostom,  the  Bible  could  be  read  in  lan- 
guages Syrian,  Indian,  Persian,  Armenian,  Scyth- 
ian and  Samaritan.  Now  it  can  be  read  in  almost 
every  tongue  under  heaven,  and  the  fact  that  it  is 
the  one  book  that  can  be  universally  translated  is 
a  touching  proof  that  God  is  not  far  from  any 


THE  SUPREMACY  OF  THE  BIBLE     135 

tribe,  and  that  in  the  lowest  human  being  His  image 
shines.  Poor  raiment  for  His  word  many  of  these 
dialects  are,  but  somehow  that  mighty  book  can 
clothe  itself  in  each.  One  version,  however,  and 
that  infinitely  slower  and  more  difficult  to  make, 
remains  to  be  achieved,  and  that  is  the  translation 
of  the  Bible  into  the  life  of  humanity.  When  that 
translation  is  finished,  as  it  will  be  at  last,  there 
will  be  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  wherein 
dwelleth  righteousness  and  the  peace  of  God. 

Ill 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  central  and  grand  fact 
about  the  Bible,  by  which  it  is  set  apart  from  all 
other  books  whatsoever,  and  which  invests  it  with 
an  ineffable  power  and  beauty:  it  is  the  Book  of 
the  Presence  of  God.  Wherever  the  Bible  goes 
it  brings  a  sense  of  the  presence  of  God.  Its  first 
truth  is  God,  its  last  truth  is  God,  the  basis  of  its 
uprising  passion  and  prophecy,  the  keynote  of  its 
far-sounding  melody,  is  the  reality  of  God,  whose 
presence  is  the  splendor  of  the  world,  and  whose 
awful  will  the  sun  and  stars  obey.  When  He  is 
known  to  be  near,  all  things  are  transfigured ;  when 
He  is  felt  to  be  far  away,  its  music  becomes  a  cry 
in  the  night.  It  does  not  argue  about  God ;  it  re- 
veals Him,  and  the  romance  of  its  story  is  the  un- 
folding of  His  life  in  the  tangled  and  turbulent  life 
of  man.  Hence  the  progress  of  faith  portrayed  in 
the  Bible;  but  in  the  struggle  and  conflict  of  all 


136  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

those  groping-  generations  the  living  God  abides, 
and  man  walks  in  the  midst  of  revelations. 

If  we  inquire  in  what  way  God  makes  Himself 
known  to  man  in  the  Bible,  we  ask  the  profound- 
est  question  in  the  entire  range  of  religious  inter- 
ests: Does  the  eternal  God  speak  to  man  ?  H  so, 
how  ?  No  one  may  answer  such  questions,  except 
to  say  that  truth  may  be  regarded  either  as  the 
gift  of  God  or  as  the  achievement  of  man,  because 
it  is  both.  Every  truth  is,  from  the  divine  side, 
revelation,  and  from  the  human,  discovery.  Jacob 
wrestling  with  the  angel  in  the  dawn  is  the  eternal 
parable  of  revelation.  For,  if  truth  is  a  gift  it  is 
also  a  trophy,  since  even  the  divine  reason  is  unable 
to  disclose  His  truth  to  man  until,  by  virtue  of  his 
growth  of  soul,  man  is  ready  and  worthy  and  will- 
ing to  receive  it.  Thus,  every  truth  that  God  gives 
man  wins,  and  every  truth  that  man  wins  from  the 
mystery  of  life  God  bestows.  Since  God  and  man 
are  interwoven  in  the  finding  of  truth,  collabora- 
tors, so  to  speak,  in  the  process  of  revelation,  how 
can  man  know  when  the  thought  of  God  is  made 
known  to  him?  Here  is  the  crux  of  the  whole 
matter,  and  we  need  not  hesitate  to  face  it  frankly 
and  reverently. 

There  are  two  ways  by  which  we  may  know 
where  human  thought  ends  and  the  divine  thought 
is  revealed :  by  insight  and  by  experience.  And 
the  Bible  shows  itself  to  be  unique  and  supreme  by 


THE  SUPREMACY  OF  THE  BIBLE     137 

both  tests.  For  example,  take  any  great  book  and 
one  can  tell  instantly,  not  only  by  the  sweep  and 
rhythm  and  majesty  of  certain  pages  where  the 
thought  of  the  writer  passes  beyond  itself,  but  also 
by  the  response  which  it  evokes  in  depths  of  his 
own  soul.  For  the  thoughts  of  man  at  their  high- 
est and  purest  carry  in  them,  as  the  clouds  carry 
the  sunlight,  the  thoughts  of  the  eternal.  Further 
than  this  we  cannot  go,  unless  it  be  in  that  amaz- 
ing sentence  in  the  "  Morals  on  the  Book  of  Job," 
by  St.  Gregory,  where,  in  speaking  of  the  manner 
in  which  God  makes  Himself  known  to  the  angels, 
he  writes: 

"  For  because  no  corporeal  obstacle  is  in  the  way 
of  a  spiritual  being,  God  speaks  to  His  holy  an- 
gels in  the  very  act  of  His  revealing  to  their  hearts 
His  inscrutable  secrets,  that  whatsoever  they  ought 
to  do  they  may  read  it  in  the  simple  contemplation 
of  truth,  and  that  the  very  delights  of  contempla- 
tion should  be  like  a  vocal  precept,  for  that  is  as  it 
were  spoken  to  them  as  hearers  which  is  inspired 
in  them  as  beholders." 

Beyond  these  words  no  one  may  venture  into  the 
ineffable  mystery  of  the  revelation  of  God  to  men 
or  angels ;  and  that  is  why  the  Bible,  albeit  a  book 
of  the  people  which  were  of  old,  is  eternal,  fresh 
as  the  morning  light,  exempt  from  the  touch  of 
time  because  it  is  timeless.  Often  it  resembles  the 
natural  world  in  its  elevation  and  depressions,  but 


138  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

in  its  great  hours  it  speaks  for  eternity  in  words 
childlike  in  simplicity,  awful  in  their  clarity,  and 
we  know,  by  the  mighty  answer  of  our  own  hearts, 
that  we  are  listening  to  the  truth  about  life  and 
death.  Whether  it  be  the  story  of  the  wayfarer 
dreaming  on  a  stony  bed,  the  commands  of  a  moral 
lawgiver  in  the  wilderness,  the  sob  of  a  Psalmist 
in  his  sin,  the  prophetic  vision  of  Isaiah,  or  the 
words  of  Him  who  spake  as  never  man  spake, 
when  we  read  it  we  cry  out,  as  Kepler  did  when  he 
looked  through  his  glass  into  the  sky,  "  O  Lord,  I 
think  Thy  thoughts  after  Thee." 

Moreover,  by  the  testimony  of  ages  of  human 
living,  the  moral  teachings  of  the  Bible,  and  its 
laws  of  the  life  of  the  spirit,  have  shown  them- 
selves to  be  among  the  things  that  cannot  be 
shaken.  Nations  disregard  them,  and  fall  into 
ruin.  Men  defy  them,  and  die  in  the  dust.  Even 
to-day,  in  these  new  and  changed  times,  the  pages 
of  the  Hebrew  prophets  might  be  wet  with  fresh 
tears  because  of  the  sorrows  of  the  broken  and 
fallen  in  our  midst.  The  experience  of  humanity 
in  its  moral  victory  and  defeat  becomes,  in  this 
way,  a  witness  to  the  supremacy  of  the  Bible,  con- 
firming alike  its  spiritual  vision  and  its  system  of 
moral  values.  It  is  therefore  that  the  Bible  lives, 
not  by  fiat,  but  because  it  is  the  Book  of  Eternal 
Life  in  the  midst  of  time,  and  of  its  influence  and 
power  there  will  be  no  end. 


THE  SUPREMACY  OF  THE  BIBLE     139 

IV 

Between  the  Old  and  New  Testament  there  is  a 
gulf,  not  only  as  to  time,  but  as  to  the  manner  in 
which  God  is  revealed,  as  if  the  river  of  life,  hav- 
ing run  under  ground  for  a  space,  had  burst  forth 
into  a  fountain  of  light  and  healing.  If  in  the  Old 
Testament  we  are  shown  the  contrast  between  God 
and  man  —  His  greatness  and  our  littleness,  His 
eternity  and  our  pathetic  mortality  —  the  New 
Testament  reveals  the  kinship  of  God  and  man. 
Communion  with  God  in  the  New  Testament  is 
not,  as  in  the  Old,  a  dialogue  of  one  person  with 
another,  but  the  infusion  of  a  new  life  by  an  in- 
dwelling spirit.  As  Luther  said  long  ago,  the  su- 
preme office  of  the  Bible  is  to  show  us  Christ,  and 
in  Him  is  all  that  we  need  to  know  even  if  we 
never  see  any  other  book. 

Again,  to  state  the  fact  is  to  prove  it.  Surely 
the  life  of  Christ,  as  incomparable  in  its  art  as  it 
is  ineffable  in  its  revelation  of  what  lies  at  the 
heart  of  this  dark  world,  sets  the  Bible  apart  as 
forever  supreme  and  unapproachable.  So  much 
is  this  so,  indeed,  that  it  seems  as  needless  to  dis- 
cuss the  uniqueness  of  the  Bible  as  to  defend  it 
from  assault.  If  one  will  not  hear  that  Biography 
of  Love,  that  Memoir  of  Pity,  that  historic  record 
of  Redeeming  Grace,  neither  will  he  believe  though 
one  arise  from  the  dead.  There  is  disclosed  the 
heart     of     the     eternal,     the     crowning     glory 


140  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

of  the  Bible,  and  the  sovereig-n  beauty  of 
the  world;  at  once  a  revelation  and  a  re- 
demption. As  St.  Jerome  put  it  in  the  preface 
to  his  Commentary  on  Isaiah:  "  If,  according  to 
St.  Paul,  Christ  is  '  the  power  of  God  and  the 
wisdom  of  God,'  one  who  knows  not  the  Scriptures 
knows  not  that  power  and  wisdom;  for  ignorance 
of  the  Scriptures  is  ignorance  of  Christ."  If  the 
spirit  of  Jesus  is  more  diffused  now  than  when 
Jerome  wrote,  it  is  still  true  that  our  life  and  litera- 
ture, so  far  as  they  are  imbued  with  His  truth, 
reflect  the  light  of  the  Gospels. 

Add  now  the  twenty  centuries  of  high,  heroic 
Christian  experience,  so  rich,  so  radiant,  so  pro- 
found, deriving,  as  it  so  gratefully  confesses,  from 
the  story  of  the  life  of  Christ  in  the  Bible,  and  the 
testimony  is  transcendent!  Here  the  facts  are 
overwhelming,  so  that  he  who  runs  may  read, 
showing  that  wherever  the  Bible  goes  there  go  light 
and  hope,  and  noble  human  living  —  tenderness  in 
the  family,  righteousness  in  the  state,  and  honor 
among  men.  What  the  Bible  has  meant  to  our 
poor  humanity,  and  will  yet  mean  to  unknown  ages 
hidden  in  the  womb  of  time,  by  virtue  of  its  power 
to  cleanse  the  sinful,  heal  the  broken  of  heart,  and 
lift  into  faith  and  love  those  attacked  by  despair, 
wasted  by  weariness,  or  worn  with  grief,  no  mor- 
tal pen  can  recite.  Take  a  single  page  from  the 
story  of  the  Bible  in  New  Guinea,  typical  of  ten 
thousand  volumes  of  Christian  history,  and  it  tells 


THE  SUPREMACY  OF  THE  BIBLE      141 

us  facts  more  to  be  prized  than  the  discovery  of  a 
new  star  in  the  sky : 

"  I  have  myself  seen  murderers  and  cannibals 
live  peaceful  lives.  I  have  seen  shameless  thieves 
and  robbers  become  honest ;  I  have  seen  the  lascivi- 
ous and  filthy  become  pure;  I  have  seen  the  quar- 
relsome and  selfish  become  kind  and  gentle.  But  I 
have  never  heard  of  such  changes  arising  from  any 
other  agency  than  that  of  the  Word  whose  en- 
trance bringeth  life,  and  whose  acceptance  is  the 
power  of  God  unto  salvation." 

Now  and  again  a  great  heroic  soul,  or  some 
humble,  obscure  saint,  shows  us  what  life  is  when 
the  Bible  is  translated  into  character  —  how  it 
makes  God  real  and  near,  investing  these  fleeting 
days  with  enduring  significance  and  sanctity ;  how 
it  strengthens  what  is  weak,  softens  what  is  hard, 
and  touches  the  whole  nature  to  beauty  and  fine- 
ness; how  it  fortifies  the  soul  against  those  blind 
fears  which  no  one  can  name  but  which  make  a 
secret  terror  in  the  way;  how  it  heals  those  pro- 
found sorrows  of  which  we  hardly  dare  to  speak, 
not  by  mere  lapse  of  time  nor  the  induration  of  the 
heart,  but  by  transfiguring  the  old  tenderness  into 
a  new  solace;  and  how,  at  last,  it  flings  an  arch  of 
promise  across  the  all-devouring  grave,  linking 
our  mortal  life  with  a  life  that  shall  endless  be. 

I  have  not  finished,  but  I  must  stop.  It  is  of 
no  use  to  go  on.  I  feel  that  what  hovers  before 
me,  although  it  is  so  vivid,  is  not  to  be  told  save  by 


1^2  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

the  Bible  itself,  which,  as  I  said  at  the  outset,  needs 
no  one  to  speak  for  it.  Nay,  it  is  the  Bible  that 
speaks  in  my  behalf,  and  as  I  listen  debate  ceases, 
difficulties  are  forgotten,  anxiety  disappears,  and  I 
am  as  a  child  in  the  arms  of  One  who  knows  what 
I  am,  whence  I  came,  why  I  am  here,  and  whither 
I  go,  and  who  smiles  at  my  terrors. 


XIII 
ALL  SOULS  AND  ALL  SAINTS 

"  Behold,  all  souls  are  mine." —  Ezek.  i8 :  4. 
"This  honor  have  all  the  saints." — Psa.  149:9- 

THE  two  festivals  joined  in  our  theme,  as 
they  are  united  in  time,  are  Hke  two 
stanzas  in  the  poetry  of  the  Christian 
year.  It  is  fitting  that  they  be  celebrated  in  the 
autumn  time,  with  its  ripeness,  its  richness,  and 
its  mellow,  haunting  loveliness,  when  the  harvest 
brings  the  treasures  of  the  seasons.  How  in  ac- 
cord with  the  pieties  of  the  heart  to  recall  those 
who  walked  here  before  us  in  other  autumns,  and 
who  found  their  home,  as  we  must  find  ours,  in 
Him  who  abides  from  one  generation  to  another. 
If  we  are  fleeting.  He  is  eternal,  and  our  hope  in 
life,  in  death,  and  in  all  that  lies  beyond  is  in  Him 
who  is  over  all  and  whose  mercy  never  faileth. 

The  words  of  the  first  text,  taken  from  one  of 
the  greatest  chapters  of  the  Bible,  need  no  one  to 
prove  that  they  were  divinely  spoken.  When  we 
hear  them  we  know  that  prophet  was  right  when 
he  said,  "  The  word  of  the  Lord  came  unto  me, 
saying,  Behold,  all  souls  are  mine."     The  words 

143 


144  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

are  worthy  of  the  speech  of  God.  Human  thought 
at  its  highest  and  purest  carries  in  it,  as  the  clouds 
carry  the  sunHght,  the  thoughts  of  the  Eternal, 
By  the  majesty  and  rhythm  of  such  words,  as  well 
as  by  the  spontaneous  answer  of  our  hearts,  we 
know  that  the  thought  of  the  writer  passed  beyond 
itself.  They  have  in  them  the  echo  of  the  infinite, 
in  their  sweep  and  grasp  and  grandeur. 

"  For  the  love  of  God  is  broader 
Than  the  measure  of  man's  mind ! 
And  the  heart  of  the  Eternal 
Is  most  wonderfully  kind." 

Seventy  years  ago  it  would  have  been  deemed  a 
blasphemy  to  say  that  God  is  under  obligations  to 
man.  In  those  days  men  seemed  to  think  that 
the  chief  attribute  of  God  is  an  arbitrary  and  ir- 
responsible almightiness,  as  if,  having  brought  man 
into  being.  He  was  in  no  way  responsible  to  him 
or  for  him.  One  sometimes  wonders  how  men 
could  worship  such  a  God  at  all.  Should  a  man 
declare  himself  exempt  from  obligation  to  his 
family,  he  would  be  despised  by  all  just  and  honor- 
able men.  Yes,  God  is  under  obligation  to  man, 
under  the  obligations  of  His  perfection.  Having 
made  man  in  own  image.  He  owes  him  life,  love, 
forgiveness,  compassion,  sympathy,  and  eternal  re- 
gard. This  would  seem  to  be  self-evident,  if  we 
think  a  moment.  The  source  of  morality  must  be 
moral.  The  source  of  knowledge  must  be  ra- 
tional.    The  source  of  that  stream  of  love  which 


ALL  SOULS  AND  ALL  SAINTS       145 

waters  our  mortal  life,  must  be  an  infinite  Love. 
Since  human  souls  belong  to  God,  so  long  as  He 
is  God  they  can  never  be  absent  from  His  thought 
and  love. 


Now  consider  some  of  the  deep  meanings  of 
this  day  of  all  souls.  No  truth,  no  fact,  can  have 
a  larger  claim  on  the  thought  of  men  than  the  truth 
that  all  souls  belong  to  God.  It  is  fundamental  in 
theology.  It  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  religious  phil- 
osophy, and  is  the  enduring  foundation  of  all 
fruitful  thinking  about  the  problems  of  humanity. 
It  implies,  first  of  all,  a  common  origin  of  all  men, 
one  source  of  life  for  all  souls.  Whatever  theory 
men  may  hold  as  to  the  physical  origins  of  hu- 
manity, this  text  tells  us  the  truth  we  most  need 
to  know  about  the  real  origin  of  man.  Admit 
that  mankind  evolved  slowly  from  lowly  begin- 
nings, it  is  none  the  less  true  that  all  souls  come 
from  God  and  exist  in  Him.  He  is  spirit;  they 
are  spirit.  God  is  father;  the  soul  is  child,  and 
this  ineffable  kinship  of  God  and  man  is  the  master 
light  of  all  our  seeing,  as  it  is  the  ground  of  all 
our  hope.  Human  intelligence,  human  will,  hu- 
man love,  must  have  their  source  in  an  infinite 
Mind,  a  perfect  Will,  an  eternal  Love ;  and  because 
all  souls  have  a  common  and  divine  heredity,  we 
are  brothers  to  the  last  man  of  us,  forever. 

Also,  a  common  origin  implies  a  common  dis- 


146  THE  MERCY  OP  HELL 

cipline  and  development,  not  only  common  facul- 
ties, but  a  common  basis  of  culture.  All  great 
thinkers  unite  in  saying  that  our  life  on 
earth  has  meaning  only  when  we  see  it  is  a 
great  school  and  a  great  schooling,  and  so  they 
have  taught.  Our  age  boasts  of  its  achievements, 
but  in  regard  to  the  vital  things  that  matter  most 
the  man  of  to-day  stands  side  by  side  with  his  fore- 
sires.  Outwardly  the  world  has  undergone  im- 
mense and  bewildering  transformation,  but  in  its 
essential  conditions  life  remains  what  it  has  al- 
ways been.  Sunshine  is  the  same,  and  starlight, 
and  the  course  of  the  seasons,  and  the  blood  in  the 
veins  of  men.  The  great  river  channels  hardly 
change  with  the  centuries ;  and  those  other  streams, 
the  life-currents  which  ebb  and  flow  in  human 
hearts,  pulsate  to  the  same  great  needs,  the  same 
great  loves  and  terrors.  Hunger  and  labor  go 
on  as  of  old,  and  seedtime  and  harvest,  and  mar- 
riage and  birth  and  death. 

No  doubt  this  is  one  reason  why  the  oldest  and 
simplest  occupations  of  man  come  home  to  all  of 
us  so  closely,  and  touch  us  so  deeply.  Any  trade 
that  lies  close  to  nature,  like  that  of  the  hunter, 
the  herdsman,  the  husbandman,  the  builder,  has 
power  to  thrill  our  pulses  with  ancestral  instincts 
and  memories,  and  touch  us  to  poetry.  As  Stev- 
enson said,  these  ancient  things  —  the  tilling  of 
the  soil,  the  tending  of  a  flock,  the  building  of  a 
house  —  have  upon  them  the  dew  of  the  morning 


ALL  SOULS  AND  ALL  SAINTS       147 


of  humanity.  For  the  same  reason,  a  road  across 
a  desert,  a  sheltering  roof  against  a  storm,  or  a 
hearth-fire  glowing  in  the  darkness,  can  stir  the 
human  heart  as  symbols  of  human  fellowship  in 
common  necessity.  Just  so,  our  great  books  are 
classics  because  they  tell  of  these  elemental  things 
which  are  like  the  sky  and  the  wind,  like  bread  and 
milk,  like  the  kisses  of  little  children  and  the  tears 
we  shed  beside  the  grave.  When  a  poet  sings  of 
these  old  human  realities,  his  song  never  grows 
obsolete  or  out  of  date,  because  they  are  a  part  of 
the  common  heritage  of  mankind. 

Here  lies  the  meaning  of  that  profound  saying 
of  a  Kempis :  "  He  who  seeks  his  own  loses  the 
things  that  are  common."  All  alike  have  the 
voiceless  magnificence  of  earth  and  sky,  the  min- 
istry of  social  condition,  and  the  harsh  attrition 
of  the  years  amidst  which  we  walk  and  work.  To 
all  souls  come  the  deep  experiences  of  sorrow,  the 
hard  lot  of  disappointment,  and  the  sad  suggestion 
and  the  sadder  defilement  of  wrong.  The  tempta- 
tions that  tug  at  us  are  such  as  men  have  felt 
since  the  far  time  when  the  Vedic  poets  sang  in 
India,  and  the  woes  we  endure  are  gray  with  age. 
They  all  mean  a  common  discipline,  a  lesson  in  that 
inevitable  Divine  education  of  humanity  which  is 
made  necessary  by  our  kinship  with  God  and  our 
candidacy  for  righteousness  and  the  growing 
vision  of  truth.  Thus,  by  the  ordinance  of  God, 
we  must  face  the  facts  of  life,  in  the  lowest  place 


148  THE  MERCY  OP  HELL 

of  toil  and  care,  as  well  as  along  the  path  of  joy, 
if  happily  we  may  learn  the  deep  and  tender  wis- 
dom of  the  old  Quaker  in  the  Whittier  poem : 

"  Scarcely  have  I  asked  in  prayer 
That  which  others  might  not  share." 

Fellows,  as  we  are,  in  the  discipline  of  a  Great 
School,  it  is  yet  true  that  each  must  do  his  task  and 
learn  his  lesson  as  if  he  were  alone  with  God.  No 
truth  is  more  in  need  of  emphasis  to-day  when  a 
high-sounding  New  Morality,  as  it  is  called,  is 
striking  at  the  roots  of  individual  moral  responsi- 
bility. Hugo  wrote  his  "  Les  Miserables "  to 
show  the  often  cruel  injustice  of  our  social  system, 
as  he  wrote  "  Notre  Dame  "  to  reveal  the  tyranny 
and  terror  of  superstition.  But  he  leaves  us  with 
the  impression  that  society,  not  the  individual,  is 
the  real  criminal.  Ardent  and  sympathetic  souls, 
taking  this  half-truth  and  forgetting  the  other  half, 
use  it,  albeit  with  the  best  intention,  in  a  way  to 
weaken  the  moral  life.  Against  such  teaching  the 
mighty  document  from  which  my  first  text  is  taken 
is  a  thunderous  rebuke,  showing  that  it  is  neither 
new  nor  moral.  It  would  be  a  philanthropy  to  put 
that  chapter  from  Ezekiel  in  the  hand  of  every 
youth  in  our  land,  if  only  to  reinforce  the  awful 
voice  of  his  own  soul  telling  him  that  he,  not  his 
father,  nor  society,  is  the  master  of  his  life. 

There  rises  an  inevitable  logic,  deriving  from 
the  fact  of  a  common  origin  and  a  common  dis- 


ALL  SOULS  AND  ALL  SAINTS       149 

ciplinc  of  all  souls,  by  which  we  are  led  to  the 
great  hope  of  a  final  common  destiny.  If  all  souls 
belong  to  God,  and  if  God  is  as  wise  as  He  is 
great,  as  loving  as  He  is  powerful,  there  seems  no 
way  to  escape  it.  Unless,  indeed,  we  say  that  evil 
is  mightier  than  good,  and  that  the  will  of  man 
can  defeat  the  Love  that  will  not  let  us  go.  Some 
are  much  concerned  with  destination,  but  we  need 
to  emphasize,  also,  and  more  vitally,  the  larger 
fact  of  destiny,  which  is  moral  and  spiritual.  For 
the  primary  thing  is  not  where  we  go,  but  what  we 
become  in  the  agony  and  bloody  sweat  of  the 
moral  process.  Whether  few  or  many  are  to  be 
saved  need  not  be  a  dogma,  but  surely  it  is  in 
accord  with  the  inevitable  sequence  of  the  Divine 
origin  of  all  souls  to  regard  retribution,  so  certain 
here  and  hereafter,  as  a  part  of  the  common  dis- 
cipline of  redemption.  Let  us  rejoice  in  the 
awful,  leveling  love  of  God,  wherein  there  is  no 
difference  between  the  first  and  the  last,  and  rest 
our  hope  in  Him  in  whose  great  hand  we  stand. 

II 

How  fitting,  in  a  world  made  so  sad  by  moral 
defeat,  to  have  a  day  set  apart  in  honor  of  those 
who  won  victory  over  life  and  time  and  death. 
In  the  calendar  of  the  church  every  day  in  the  year 
is  dedicated  to  one  of  the  great  saints,  in  whom 
holiness  was  touched  by  the  light  and  fire  of 
genius.     But  the  day  of  All  Saints  was  instituted 


150  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

in  honor  of  obscure,  heroic  souls  who,  hearing  a 
voice  untranslatable,  sweeter  than  music  and 
vague  as  a  dream,  dared  to  follow  it  and  find  the 
great  secret.  Truly  did  George  Eliot  say,  because 
things  are  as  well  with  us  as  they  are  is  largely 
due  to  the  unknown  nobility  of  unhistoric  lives 
that  sleep  in  unmarked  graves.  They  were  men 
and  women  like  ourselves  who,  by  the  sweet  grace 
of  God,  won  mastery  of  moods,  conquest  of  pas- 
sion, and  toiled  in  the  name  of  Eternity  in  the 
fields  of  Time.  They  were  patriots  in  the  Repub- 
lic of  God,  and  the  thought  of  them  brings  a  name- 
less cheer  to  all  who  struggle  and  aspire  for  a  bet- 
ter life. 

Surely  here,  as  in  so  many  ways,  we  of  the 
freer  fellowship  have  much  to  learn  from  the  older 
church,  for  the  capacity  for  hero  worship  is  one 
of  the  great  forces  of  our  being,  and  is  unsur- 
passed in  evoking  the  highest  in  man.  What 
Washington  and  Lincoln  are  to  this  nation,  with 
its  ideals  and  hopes,  wise  men  know;  what  the 
prophets,  apostles,  martyrs,  saints,  and  heroic  serv- 
ants of  our  kind,  might  mean  for  the  renewal  in 
each  new  age  of  the  Christian  ideal  and  obliga- 
tion, no  one  can  estimate.  In  this  behalf,  we  must 
enlarge  the  calendar  so  as  to  include  any  one,  of 
any  faith  or  any  race,  who  by  a  like  precious  grace 
attained  to  the  victory  most  worth  winning ;  names 
as  far  apart  as  Luther  and  Lincoln,  Eckhart  and 
Emerson,  Wesley  and  Woolman.     That  is  to  say, 


ALL  SOULS  AND  ALL  SAINTS       151 

as  all  souls  are  included  in  the  processes  of  history, 
and  in  the  progressive  unfolding  of  humanity,  we 
would  set  up  for  our  homage  all  who  in  the  thickest 
of  sharpest  test  have  been  triumphant,  and  who 
are  concrete  examples  of  the  highest  moral  and 
spiritual  life. 

The  highest  Gospel  was  a  Biography,  said  Car- 
lyle,  and  that  gospel  stirs  men  like  mighty  music 
just  because  it  is  not  set  forth  in  a  proposition, 
but  incarnated  in  a  Personality.  Had  it  been 
made  known  as  a  body  of  ethical  and  religious 
truth,  an  order  of  spiritual  facts,  it  would  not  have 
swayed  men  as  it  did,  redeeming  the  world  from 
the  rot  of  paganism.  No,  the  Word  became  flesh, 
walked  with  men  wearing  the  hues  of  human  life, 
revealing  a  new  type  of  moral  manhood  achieved 
by  the  Divine  method  of  discipline  for  character. 
Of  that  living  word  of  eternal  life  the  saints  are 
the  best  translators  and  interpreters,  not  because 
they  thought  more  deeply,  but  because  they  lived 
more  heroically.  They  did  not  know  they  were 
heroes;  they  did  not  profess  to  be  saints.  They 
were  not  free  from  fault.  But  forgetting  all  else, 
they  followed  in  His  way  with  a  passionate  and 
persistent  fidelity,  serving  Him  in  the  needs  of 
those  whom  He  loved,  and  so  came  to  the  Place  of 
Vision,  even  to  the  City  of  God  whose  gates  stand 
open  day  and  night. 

"  Brothers,  we  are  treading 
Where  the  saints  have  trod." 


152  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

Lives  of  the  Saints!  How  wonderful  it  is  to 
have  each  day  of  our  troubled  life  —  often  only  a 
muddled  memory  of  what  it  ought  to  be  —  linked 
with  the  name  of  one  who,  amid  difficulties  like  our 
own,  and  greater,  passed  before  us  in  triumph! 
How  thrilling  it  is  to  see  their  footprints  on  this 
road  we  find  so  hard  and  strange  —  to  realize  that 
the  temptations  with  which  we  wrestle  from  day 
to  day  are  all  set  down  in  the  Confessions  of  Au- 
gustine or  the  Journal  of  Wesley  —  that  the  new 
peace  we  gain  when  we  make  the  great  surrender 
is  the  story  of  Luther.  What  resources  for  rein- 
forcement and  inspiration  lie  at  hand  for  our  using 
in  a  closer  fellowship  with  these  leaders  and  eman- 
cipators of  the  soul,  these  friends  and  aiders  of 
those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit.  They  were 
great  souls,  they  fought  great  battles,  they  saw  into 
greater  depths,  and  it  will  put  new  heart  into  us 
to  come  into  closer  intimacy  with  their  vivid  and 
aspiring  lives.  Aye,  and  others  unknown  to  the 
great  world  have  walked  with  us  betimes,  and  in 
death  stand  revealed  — 

"  Saints  of  every  day,  like  many  another, 

They  lived  and  loved  and  strove  to  bless  — 
Friend,  the  sister,  the  unselfish  mother 

Whose  aim  was  holiness. 
I   muse  upon  their  virtues  and   remember 

Their  lives   of  charity  and   faithfulness 
And,  once  again,  take  courage  to  go  forward 

My  world  to  love  and  bless." 


ALL  SOULS  AND  ALL  SAINTS       153 


Not  all  can  be  great  and  famous,  not  all  can 
sway  the  world  witH  eloquence,  but  all  can  be  pure 
of  heart,  faithful  to  duty,  heroic  in  trial  —  victors 
by  the  grace  of  Him  who  is  King  of  Saints,  by 
whom  all  souls  are  called  to  be  saints  of  the  Most 
High,  whose  we  are,  in  whom  we  live,  and  in  the 
service  of  whose  wise  will  there  is  peace. 


XIV 
THE  GREAT  CONFIDENCE 

"  I  am  persuaded  that  neither  death  nor  life,  nor  anything 
else  in  all  creation  shall  be  able  to  separate  us  from  the 
love  of  God  in  Christ." — Rom.  8:38,  39. 

IF  we  had  never  read  this  text  before,  and  had 
no  clue  at  all  as  to  who  wrote  it,  what  would 
be  the  first  question  in  our  minds?  No  one 
would  doubt  that  it  was  the  utterance  of  some 
deeply  religious  soul;  but  most  of  us  would  fall 
to  wondering  what  the  life  of  the  writer  must 
have  been  to  allow  him  to  have  and  to  hold  a  faith 
so  absolute,  so  joyous,  so  triumphant.  Some 
would  say  that  he  must  have  lived  a  sheltered  life, 
secluded  from  untoward  happenings,  ever  to  have 
kept  such  a  faith  intact. 

But  this  is  no  fragment  of  unknown  authorship, 
and  its  writer  was  a  man  about  whose  life,  both 
inner  and  outer,  we  have  detailed  information 
from  his  own  pen.  Nor  was  the  life  of  St,  Paul 
placid,  sheltered,  or  unexciting.  Instead,  it  was 
a  thing  of  tempest,  of  conflict,  of  struggle  against 
many  odds,  full  of  griefs  and  dangers,  of  heart- 
ache and  almost  heartbreak.  Everywhere  in  his 
letters  he  tells  of  storm  and  stress,  of  toil  and 

155 


156  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

travail,  of  labor  and  sorrow,  of  sickness  and  an- 
guish. Yet  he  made  bold  to  glory  in  his  tribula- 
tions, and  was  more  than  victor  through  a  faith 
that  kept  him  as  truly  as  he  kept  it. 

Just  so  with  the  life  of  George  Matheson,  whose 
lyric  of  love  and  life  everlasting  is  our  theme  to- 
day. Fiery  and  daring  of  soul,  his  history  is  the 
story  of  a  heavy  handicap,  of  terrible  trial  of  faith, 
of  heroic  struggle  for  light  in  the  dark.  Born  in 
a  home  of  poverty  and  sweet  piety,  when  he  was 
yet  a  child  his  mother  made  the  discovery  that  his 
vision  was  defective.  For  a  time,  by  the  aid  of 
powerful  glasses  and  large  type,  he  was  able  to 
study.  When  he  went  to  the  Glasgow  college  his 
sisters  went  with  him,  lending  him  their  eyes,  and 
learning  Latin,  Greek  and  Hebrew  to  help  him. 
Despite  his  trammels  he  won  high  honors,  espe- 
cially in  philosophy,  and  he  betrayed  very  early  his 
wonderful  gift  of  style  in  essays  unique  for  their 
delicacy  and  beauty.  Still  the  darkness  deepened, 
albeit  with  occasional  luminous  breaks  in  it. 

Stevenson,  Watson,  and  Drummond  were 
among  his  school  fellows,  and  all  of  them  admired 
his  intellect  and  his  heroic  gaiety  of  heart.  He 
used  to  walk  eight  miles  to  meet  his  mother,  who 
brought  him  sweetmeats  from  home,  and  once  took 
a  lad  with  him  who  was  very  neatly  dressed.  His 
mother  saw  the  contrast,  and  wept.  Whereupon 
George  said,  "  Never  mind,  mother ;  I  have  no  fine 
tie  like  the  laddie,  but  I  have  all  the  prizes  they 


THE  GREAT  CONFIDENCE  157 


had  to  give ;  "  and  he  poured  them  into  her  lap. 
The  angels  of  ancestry  and  the  Spirit  of  God 
called  Matheson  to  the  ministry ;  but  he  had  some 
difficulty  in  securing  a  parish,  for  he  was  now 
almost  blind.  At  last  he  was  called  to  Innellan 
on  the  Clyde,  though  it  is  of  record  that  a  large 
minority  objected  and  made  protest. 

Slowly  the  darkness  deepened,  and  at  the  open- 
ing of  his  ministry  he  had  to  face  the  appalling 
fact  that  he  was  hopelessly  handicapped  in  the  very 
faculty  which  gives  access  to  the  world  of  knowl- 
edge. Think  of  what  that  meant  to  one  who  had 
the  power  of  genius  and  the  high  ambitions  of  a 
scholar  —  a  poet-soul  to  whom  the  glint  of  sun- 
light on  flowing  waters,  and  the  mists  trailing  over 
the  hills,  were  heavenly  visions !  Still  the  shadow 
thickened  until  the  curtain  fell,  shutting  out  for- 
ever all  the  beauty  and  color  of  the  world.  Then 
he  knew  what  was  in  the  heart  of  Milton  when  he 
sobbed : 

"Dark,  dark,  irrevocably  dark!" 

Stone  blind  at  twenty-two!  Night  descended 
while  it  was  yet  morning  —  what  a  fate  to  fall 
upon  a  young  man! 

Only  a  handful  of  cotters  greeted  him  at  Innel- 
lan, and  his  sermons,  seldom  more  than  twenty 
minutes  long,  were  gems,  perfect  in  form,  in  dic- 
tion, in  delivery.  But  they  lacked  power.  One 
who  heard  him  said :     "  As  a  man  he  was  fine,  but 


158  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

his  preaching  was  only  nominal," —  which,  alas,  is 
only  too  true  of  most  of  our  sermons.  It  was  a 
time  of  spiritual  unrest,  of  deep  anxiety  of  soul, 
when  science  was  crass  and  faith  stood  abashed. 
Matheson  was  caught  in  that  terrible  crash,  and 
his  temple  of  faith  became  a  mass  of  ruins  — 
doubt  adding  its  horror  to  darkness.  Indeed,  he 
became  an  absolute  atheist  for  a  time,  believing 
neither  in  God  nor  in  immortality.  Almost  the 
only  book  he  could  read  was  the  tragedy  of  Job, 
and  the  deep  and  awful  questions  which  it  raises 
were  never  absent  from  his  mind.  But  he  was 
no  blatant  atheist.  Who  can  be  who  has  the  heart 
of  a  man?  And  it  was  at  this  time,  just  as  he  was 
making  ready  to  leave  the  pulpit,  that  he  wrote  his 
hymn: 

"  O  Love  that  wilt  not  let  me  go, 
I  rest  my  weary  soul  in  Thee ; 
I  give  Thee  back  the  life  I  owe, 
That  in  Thine  ocean-depths  its  flow 
May  richer,  fuller  be." 

"  My  hymn  was  composed,"  he  afterwards  told 
in  the  few  restrained  words  he  ever  said  about  it, 
"  in  the  manse  of  Innellan  on  the  evening  of  June 
6th,  1882.  I  was  at  that  time  alone.  Something 
had  happened  to  me  which  was  known  only  to  my- 
self, and  which  caused  me  the  most  severe  mental 
suffering.  The  hymn  was  the  fruit  of  that  suf- 
fering. I  had  the  impression  rather  of  having  it 
dictated  to  me  by  some  inward  voice  than  of  work- 


THE  GREAT  CONFIDENCE  169 

ing  it  out  myself,  I  am  quite  sure  that  the  whole 
work  was  completed  in  five  minutes,  and  equally 
sure  that  it  never  received  at  my  hands  any  re- 
touching or  correction." 

It  is  indeed  strange:  here  was  a  rank  atheist 
writing  one  of  the  loftiest  of  all  lyrics  in  praise  of 
the  Love  of  God.  How  can  such  things  be? 
What  happened  in  those  five  minutes?  Surely  it 
must  be  plain  that  atheism  does  not  end  the  matter, 
but  may  be,  and  should  be,  a  discovery  of  the  real 
basis  of  faith.  Atheism,  as  Tolstoi  learned,  is  an 
ultimate  evidence  of  God.  If  there  were  no  God, 
we  should  not  even  think  about  Him,  much  less 
deny  Him.  Whom  do  we  deny?  Whence  the 
idea  of  God  at  all?  Matheson  had  let  go  of  God, 
had  let  go  of  everything,  in  fact  —  but  he  felt  in 
his  heart  the  tug  of  Something  that  would  not  let 
go  of  him.  What  was  it?  Why  did  he  take  that 
tug  to  be  a  token  of  love?  Because  Love  is  the 
one  thing,  the  only  thing,  that  never  lets  go,  never 
gives  up,  never  fails !  Even  in  our  poor  humanity, 
the  love  of  a  mother  tells  us  this  truth. 

Here,  then,  is  the  real  basis  of  faith  —  not  only 
that  we  believe  in  God,  but  also,  and  far  more,  that 
He  believes  in  us.  Our  love  of  Him  may  fade  and 
grow  dim  amid  the  dark  facts  of  life;  but  His 
love  never  fades.  Others  have  sung  of  the  ten- 
derness of  Divine  love;  Matheson  sings  of  its  te- 
nacity. Surely  this  is  the  assurance  we  supremely 
want,  and  which  alone  can  satisfy  us.     Our  hope 


160  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

rests,  not  upon  our  hold  upon  God,  which  may  any 
moment  fail,  but  upon  His  hold  upon  us,  which 
cannot  fail.  The  tie  between  God  and  man  is  in- 
finitely elastic,  but  it  is  infinitely  strong.  We  may 
go  far,  doubt  Him  and  defy  Him  indefinitely, 
but  that  tie  will  never  break.  It  is  as  if  He 
said: 

"  Rebel  against  Me ;  turn  from  Me  and  go  your 
own  way,  and  discover  how  unprofitable  it  is; 
deny  me  in  theory  or  in  practice,  and  fare  accord- 
ingly —  but  one  thing  you  cannot  make  Me  do, 
and  that  is  to  make  Me  deny  you  and  let  you  go. 
To  all  eternity  you  are  Mine.  I  have  loved  you 
with  an  everlasting  love;  therefore  with  loving 
kindness  I  will  draw  you." 

Truly,  man  may  resist  God  for  long  —  how 
long,  no  one  knows  —  but  in  the  end  the  mighty 
Love  of  God  will  have  its  way,  conquering  our 
doubt,  our  indifference,  and  our  sin.  Self-will 
may  go  a  great  distance,  even  into  a  far  country, 
with  heart-soreness  and  woe  for  its  reward  —  but 
the  will  of  God  must  triumph.  Divine  defeat  is 
impossible;  His  love  claims  us,  it  holds  us;  it  is 
the  ocean  of  which  our  little  lives  are  inlets.  He 
will  not  let  us  go  —  that  is  our  confidence  in  dark 
and  lonely  times,  when  all  the  billows  rush  over 
us,  sweeping  us  away.  He  will  not  let  go  —  that 
is  our  redemption  in  the  bitter  hour  when  con- 
science convicts  us  of  sin  and  disobedience;  and 
we  have  no  heart  left  in  us. 


THE  GREAT  CONFIDENCE  161 

■'  And  though  we  turn  us  from  Thy  face, 
And  wander  far  and  long, 
Thou  hold'st  us  still  in  Thine  embrace, 
O  love  of  God,  most  strong !  " 

Upon  this  deepest  of  all  realities  the  poet  rested 
his  weary  soul,  and  found  the  peace  of  a  great  joy. 
Here  was  no  easy  acquiescence,  dying  away  in 
sighs  of  hopeless  resignation.  No;  he  fought  his 
fate  in  rebel  mood,  and  by  fighting  the  will  of  God 
learned  what  that  will  was  —  learned  that  God 
does  not  wish  to  break  our  wills,  but  to  make  them. 
Wisely  he  accepted  the  inevitable  as  a  token  of  the 
Divine  will,  and  conquered  by  submission.  Not 
only  conquered,  but  found  a  ray  of  light  in  the 
dark  night  of  the  soul : 

"  O  Light  that  followest  all  my  way, 
I  yield  my  flickering  torch  to  Thee ; 
My  heart  restores  its  borrowed  ray, 
That  in  Thy  sunshine's  blaze  its  day 
May  brighter,  fairer  be." 

Newman  called  us  to  follow  a  Kindly  Light  o'er 
moor  and  fen,  o'er  crag  and  torrent ;  but  here  is  a 
Light  that  follows  us.  Last  summer  on  the  lake, 
as  our  boat  sped  along,  the  moon  made  a  path  of 
rippling  light  behind  —  and  it  followed  us  all  the 
way.  Even  so,  goodness  and  mercy  shall  follow 
us  all  the  days  of  our  lives,  until  we  come  to  the 
house  of  the  Lord.  Youth  is  self-confident  and 
self-sufficient,  and  it  is  well  that  it  should  be  so, 
else  it  would  lack  initiative.  But  he  is  no  wise 
man  who,  having  lived  to  middle  age,  does  not 


162  THE  MERCY  OF  HEIX 

know  "  that  it  is  not  in  man  that  walketh  to  direct 
his  steps."  We  plan  and  scheme,  counsel  and  con- 
trive —  yet  how  foolish  is  our  wisdom,  and  how 
short  a  way  we  can  see  ahead.  One  step  is 
enough,  and  the  light  shining  from  behind  us 
shows  us  the  way  to  the  next  duty  —  happy  are  we 
if  we  walk  in  it. 

With  the  third  stanza  of  the  hymn  the  music 
deepens,  and  we  feel  that  we  are  listening  to  sacred 
secrets  of  which  mortals  hardly  dare  speak. 
Every  line  of  this  song  is  noble  poetry,  charged 
with  tenderness  and  courage;  but  here  are  words 
which  dazzle  by  their  very  depth  and  wonder : 

"  O  Joy  that  seekest  me  through  pain, 
I  cannot  close  my  heart  to  Thee; " 

lines  the  truth  of  which  is  testified  to  by  the  great 
sufferers  of  the  world.  What  can  it  mean? 
Have  we  misread  the  meaning  of  pain  entirely? 
Is  it  possible  that  through  all  the  woe  of  life  a 
strange,  ineffable  joy  is  trying  to  find  its  way  to 
us?  Yes,  it  is  true,  and  the  lives  of  great  sufferers 
confirm  it,  and  most  of  all  the  lone  Sufferer  who 
endured  the  shame  for  the  joy  set  before  Him : 

"O  Cross  that  Hftest  up  my  head, 
I  dare  not  ask  to  fly  from  Thee." 

Consider  now  the  fruit  of  this  faith  in  the  life 
of  the  poet-preacher.  First  of  all,  it  made  him 
divinely  tolerant  of  all  forms  of  faith,  and  he  was 
wont  to  say  that  if  all  the  heretics  who  have  been 


THE  GREAT  CONFIDENCE  163 

burned  at  the  stake  were  alive  to-day,  and  each  in 
charge  of  a  church,  nothing  would  give  him  greater 
joy  than  to  preach  for  each  in  turn.  The  only 
condition  he  would  make,  he  said,  would  be  that 
he  might  have  liberty  to  tell  of  the  Love  of  God 
as  he  had  found  it.  His  preaching  became  more 
and  more  as  the  waving  of  a  wand  of  power.  The 
effect  of  it  grew  to  be  such  that  those  who  listened 
were  transformed  into  a  single  person,  to  whom 
the  preacher  spoke  soul  to  soul  —  one  broad  lake, 
as  it  were,  to  which  the  heart  of  the  preacher  com- 
municated itself,  now  in  ripples,  now  in  waves. 

Such  a  preacher  could  not  long  remain  un- 
known. Soon  we  find  him  pastor  of  a  great 
church  in  Edinburgh,  and  for  thirteen  years  he 
was  the  shepherd  of  two  thousand  souls  —  a  blind 
man  leading  a  host  out  of  shadows  into  Light! 
The  note  of  his  gospel  was  gladness.  Despite  his 
infirmities,  there  grew  in  his  heart  the  crowning 
flower  of  joy.  It  was  a  kind  of  glee,  contagious 
and  captivating  —  a  gaiety,  as  of  one  who  has 
found  a  great  secret  and  could  not  keep  it.  He 
was  radiantly  happy.  After  more  than  a  decade 
of  arduous,  joyous  labor,  his  fame  growing  every 
day,  he  retired  to  devote  himself  to  literary  work. 
And  such  books,  so  full  of  sweetness,  and  light, 
chief  among  them  his  "  Studies  of  the  Portrait  of 
Christ!  "  His  little  books  of  mystical  meditations 
are  gems,  each  one  made  up  of  page-long  essays; 
as,  for  example: 


164  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

"  There  is  a  difference  between  love  and  duty. 
Duty  has  a  sense  of  merit;  love  has  none.  Duty 
has  always  the  feeling  that  it  has  done  very  well; 
love  never  admits  that  it  has  come  up  to  the  mark. 
Whence  this  humility  of  love  compared  with  duty  ? 
Is  not  love  the  higher  of  the  two?  Yes.  Duty  is 
talent;  love  is  genius.  But  why  should  genius  be 
more  humble  than  talent?  Because  it  really  has 
less  trouble.  Genius  does  what  it  must;  talent 
does  what  it  can.  Therefore  is  talent  more  con- 
ceited than  genius;  it  is  more  conscious  of  its 
labor  because  it  really  has  more  labor.  Love  is 
the  genius  of  the  heart.  It  does  its  work  because 
it  cannot  help  it  ^  not  because  it  ought,  but  be- 
cause it  must.  That  is  why  it  repudiates  merit. 
That  is  why  it  '  is  not  puffed  up.'  " 

How  simple  it  is,  how  lucid,  how  sure  the  in- 
sight —  and  that  is  only  one  of  many  pages  of  like 
beauty  and  charm.  Of  all  writers  of  the  last  forty 
years  none  has  dwelt  so  lovingly,  so  victoriously, 
on  the  theme  of  immortality.  No  one,  perhaps, 
since  George  Macdonald,  has  declared  so  trium- 
phant an  assurance  of  the  future  life.  He  was 
utterly  without  doubt  as  regards  the  life  after 
death.  Love  zvill  not  let  us  go  —  that  much  he 
knew,  and  that  truth  transfigured  life  and  death, 
and  all  the  dark  depths  beyond.  What  a  ministry 
in  a  world  so  full  of  griefs  and  graves! 

What  a  life  to  live,  showing  by  heroic  example 
that  in  each  condition  there  is  a  divine  spring  of 


THE  GREAT  CONFIDENCE  165 

help,  and  that,  however  terrible  the  calamity  may 
be,  it  is  possible  to  so  alter  ourselves,  by  the  grace 
of  God,  as  to  make  it  an  aid  and  not  a  hindrance  in 
the  progress  of  the  spirit.  His  contest  was  not 
passive;  it  was  a  victory  of  power.  What  seemed 
to  others  wounds  and  fetters,  he  transformed  into 
strength  and  gladness  and  freedom.  When  he 
was  buried,  at  the  side  of  the  grave  stood  a  huge 
floral  emblem  —  a  square  of  white  flowers,  in  the 
center  of  which  the  last  lines  of  this  hymn  were 
spelled  out  in  red  rose-buds : 

"  And    from  the  ground  there  blossoms   red 
Life  that  shall  endless  be." 


XV 

THE  VISION  OF  THE  DEAD 

"  And  I  saw  the  dead,  small  and  great,  stand  before  God ; 
and  the  books  were  opened." — Rev.  2o:  12. 

THE  Apocalypse  of  St.  John,  said  Milton, 
is  the  majestic  image  of  a  high  and  stately 
tragedy,  shutting  up  and  intermingling  her 
solemn  scenes  and  acts  with  a  sevenfold  chorus  of 
hallelujahs  and  harping  symphonies.  It  is  a  Book 
of  Vision,  forecasting,  in  forms  now  vague,  now 
terrible,  now  unspeakably  grand  and  lovely,  the 
final  issues  of  the  life  of  man  and  the  world.  Far 
beyond  the  shadows  of  time  and  death  and  sin,  it 
foresees,  with  a  triumphant  and  all  transfiguring 
faith,  the  ultimate  victory  of  the  right  and  the 
overthrow  of  evil  —  a  new  earth  overarched  by  a 
new  heaven,  and  the  City  of  God  descending.  It 
is  the  vision  of  a  Christian  seer  who,  amid  the 
tragedies  of  earth  and  the  overturnings  of  history, 
appeals  to  the  high  court  of  eternal  Judgment. 

St.  John  lived  to  be  ninety  years  of  age,  and  is 
said  to  have  been  the  only  one  of  the  Apostles  who 
did  not  wear  the  crown  of  martyrdom.  Despite 
his  infirmities,  as  life  deepened  into  twilight,  and 

167 


168  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

he  looked  upon  the  world  in  the  light  of  the  life  of 
Jesus,  seen  through  the  sunset  air  of  memory  and 
hope,  his  Gospel  became  so  simple  that  he  was 
wont  to  sum  it  all  up  in  a  sentence,  oft  repeated 
as  they  carried  him  about  on  a  cot :  "  Little 
children,  love  one  another !  "  That  was  the  heart 
of  his  Christian  faith,  the  whole  of  it,  and  on  the 
lonely  isle  of  Patmos  it  brightened  into  a  vision  so 
radiant  that  the  dark  earth  seemed  a  shadowy 
phantom  and  heaven  the  supreme  reality.  With 
what  clear  insight  Browning  reads  this  vision  in 
the  "  Death  in  the  Desert,"  showing  how  the  seer, 
with  his  bright  dying  eyes,  foresaw  all  the  subtle 
attacks  on  the  faith  of  his  Master,  and  won  our 
battles  before  they  were  fought.  As  Hugo  said, 
here  we  touch  that  sombre  portal  that  leads  toward 
God  Himself;  some  one  seems  to  push  us  from  be- 
hind, and  the  dread  entrance,  in  vague  outline, 
rouses  mingled  terror  and  longing. 

Now,  consider  the  dignity  of  this  vision,  its 
vastness,  its  inconceivable  solemnity,  its  exquisite 
and  noble  reserve.  Here  is  no  shallow  optimism 
shouting  itself  hoarse  about  certainties  whereof  no 
man  knoweth,  while  it  has  no  rebuke  for  present 
rampant  iniquity;  no  facile  and  curious  imagina- 
tion making  a  map  of  heaven  and  hell.  It  sets  no 
dates.  It  indulges  in  no  glib  dogmatism.  It  does 
not  overlook  the  awful  law  of  retribution,  here  and 
hereafter.  No;  behind  it  beats  a  mighty  passion 
for  righteousness,  a  profound  concern  for  man,  a 


THE  VISION  OF  THE  DEAD         169 

sense  of  the  tragedy  of  his  history  and  a  longing 
wonder  as  to  what  becomes  of  him  after  death. 
It  is  no  idle  speculation,  but  a  vision  vouchsafed  to 
a  great  soldier  of  righteousness,  who,  in  the  stress 
of  moral  conflict  and  the  sorrow  of  seeming  de- 
feat, is  permitted  to  behold  the  issue  —  as,  later 
when  Rome  was  reeling  to  its  ruin,  Augustine  took 
refuge  in  that  same  City  of  God.  It  is  always  so. 
In  the  darkest  periods  of  history,  in  its  most  des- 
perate crises,  there  is  some  God-illumined,  pro- 
phetic soul  who  sees  beyond  the  shadows,  as  Tol- 
stoi, in  our  own  day,  foresaw  the  tragedy  of  world- 
war,  but  looked  beyond  it  and  beheld  the  dim  figure 
of  a  great  Teacher  of  Faith  rising  out  of  the  soul 
of  Slavic  peoples,  and  calling  the  world  back  to  the 
life  of  the  Spirit. 

Reverently  let  us  study  this  vision  of  the  in- 
numerable dead,  whose  exodus  from  earth  began 
with  the  morning  of  time  and  continues  day  by 
day,  night  by  night,  and  in  this  year  of  blood  has 
become  multitudinous  and  overwhelming.  Ten- 
derly, pensively,  one  also  of  our  own  poets  broods 
in  his  "  Thanatopsis  "  over  the  earth  as  a  mighty 
sepulchre,  and  bids  us  have  no  fear  to  lie  down  in 
its  bosom,  since  we  retire  not  alone,  but  in  the  silent 
company  of  patriarchs  of  the  infant  world,  with 
kings  and  peasants,  with  hoary  sages  of  ages  past, 
with  the  fair  forms  of  matron  and  babe,  aye,  with 
the  good  and  wise,  the  wicked  and  the  foolish,  of 
every  land.     The  moon  in  her  dark  journeying, 


170  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

and  all  the  infinite  host  of  heaven,  are  shining  on 
"  the  sad  abodes  of  death,  through  the  still  lapse  of 
ages,"  until  the  friendly  earth  seems  to  the  poet 
one  vast  cemetery,  nor  could  we  wish  for  couch 
more  magnificent ! 

"  The  hills 
Rock-ribbed  and  ancient  as  the  sun;  the  vales 
Stretching   in   pensive   quietness   between ; 
The   venerable   woods ;    rivers   that   move 
In   majesty,    and   the    complaining   brooks 
That  make  the  meadow  green ;  and  poured  round  all, 
Old  Ocean's  gray  and  melancholy  waste  — 
Are  but  the  solemn  decorations  all 
Of  the  great  tomb  of  man.  .  .  .  All  that  tread 
The  globe  are  but  a  handful  to  the  tribes 
That  slumber  in  its  bosom." 

But  our  Christian  seer,  rising  above  this  vast 
shadow  that  hovers  over  the  earth,  sees  those 
whom  men  call  the  dead  standing  before  God  — 
past  kneeling,  past  praying,  erect  and  still,  await- 
ing His  judgment.  How  natural  that  one  who 
walked  with  Jesus  should  see,  first  of  all,  not  the 
great  of  earth,  not  the  mountain  peaks  of  hu- 
manity, not  the  few  elect  souls  of  valor  and  intel- 
ligence, but  the  little  ones  whom  the  world  for- 
gets and  only  God  remembers.  How  full  of  ten- 
derness and  humanity,  how  infinitely  dear  this 
text  is  to  those  in  whose  homes  the  child-voice  is 
only  an  echo,  and  whose  hearts  have  been  broken 
over  little  folded  hands!  Half  the  human  race 
die  in  infancy,  and  if  the  number  of  darkened 
homes  in  one  age  is  uncountable,  the  sum  of  them 


THE  VISION  OF  THE  DEAD         171 

in  all  ages,  since  the  wild  cry  of  the  first  mother 
over  the  first  dead  child,  is  overwhelming.  What 
is  the  fate  of  these  little  ones  who  came  and  looked, 
with  eyes  of  wonder  and  trust,  into  a  few  fond 
faces,  and  vanished?  Speechless  they  came  and 
speechless  they  went;  they  had  no  language  but  a 
cry.  They  were  forbidden  to  go  on  here;  are 
they  forbidden  to  go  on  elsewhere,  annihilated 
without  opportunity,  and  cast  as  rubbish  in  the 
void?  This  Christian  vision  of  the  dead  says. 
No!  If  they  have  no  history,  they  have  an  end- 
less opportunity  in  the  love  of  God  whose  they  are 
and  in  whose  presence  they  stand. 

When  on  an  ocean  voyage  a  poor  stoker  dies, 
at  once  and  without  ceremony  of  any  kind  "  his 
heavy-shotted  hammock-shroud  drops  into  a  vast 
and  wandering  grave,"  and  he  is  a  symbol  of  a 
great  majority  of  the  race.  While  they  live  they 
are  hardly  counted,  and  when  they  die  nothing 
stops.  The  big  world,  like  the  ocean  liner,  does 
not  even  slacken  its  speed.  Yet  these  multitudes, 
of  whom  the  world  takes  so  little  note,  do  the  hard 
work  of  the  world,  and  their  servdce  is  inconceiv- 
ably great.  Obscure,  nameless,  unknown,  as 
Lincoln  said,  God  must  love  them  else  He  would 
not  have  made  so  many  of  them.  Those  who  talk 
so  glibly  about  the  survival  of  the  fittest  only  be- 
tray their  brutal,  snobbish  egotism,  for  they  as- 
sume that  they  are  among  the  fit.  Whereas  the 
Cosmic  Spirit,  always  alert,  unerringly  detects  their 


172  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

vanity  and  atheism  lurking  under  it.  But  the 
Christian  vision,  like  Him  who  inspired  it,  reckons 
no  soul  insignificant  for  lack  of  position,  education 
or  even  character,  and  no  soul  great  save  in  its 
fellowship  with  the  Eternal  Soul. 

Think,  too,  of  the  uncountable  multitudes,  like 
the  sands  of  the  sea  for  number,  who  have  walked 
lightly  or  sadly  upon  this  earth  in  the  ages  before 
us.  What  of  them?  Of  the  fifteen  hundred  mil- 
lion inhabitants  of  this  globe  to-day,  how  few  can 
be  called  great,  how  few  are  known,  how  few 
signify;  yet  they  are  but  a  drop  in  the  bucket  be- 
side the  millions  who  lived  in  ages  agone,  long 
since  forgotten  and  fallen  into  dust.  Think  of  the 
hordes  that  battered  down  Rome,  of  the  teeming 
throngs  of  Carthage,  of  Babylon,  of  Egypt,  and 
farther  on  back  beyond  recorded  time  to  the 
swarming  and  suffering  populations  who  prepared 
the  way  for  the  great  historic  enterprise,  li  you 
look  still  further,  your  vision  is  lost  in  barbaric 
clans  and  groups  of  roving  savages,  and  when  your 
mind  sweeps  the  whole  field  of  time  the  total  of 
humanity  since  man  appeared  is  bewildering. 
Who  can  look  back  down  the  long  highway  of 
time  without  gratitude  and  pity  for  those  nameless 
millions  upon  whose  labors  and  achievements  the 
later  civilizations  rest? 

Now,  reflect  on  the  problem  which  those  mil- 
lions, as  numerous  as  clouds  of  insects  in  the  sum- 
mer air,  present  to  the  Christian  thinker.     If  we 


THE  VISION  OF  THE  DEAD         173 

follow  those  who  say  that  they  are  not  immortal, 
by  the  same  stroke  we  cut  the  ground  from  be- 
neath our  own  hope  and  consign  the  race  to  dust. 
As  Lincoln  said,  "  it  is  either  all  or  none."  To  be 
indifferent  to  those  forerunners  of  our  civilization 
betrays  a  lack  of  humanity,  to  say  nothing  of  a 
Christian  concern  for  man.  Admit  that  the 
farther  back  we  go  the  noble  lives  become  fewer, 
and  the  moral  failures  more  general.  Even  to-day 
the  race  is  largely  in  sin,  and  the  number  of  those 
who  share  the  highest  life  of  the  world,  its  science, 
its  art,  its  philosophy,  its  best  faith,  is  very  small. 
If  they  are  unfit  for  moral  bliss,  they  are  surely 
too  many  for  doom.  Those  who  seem  willing  to 
admit  the  possibility,  if  not  the  fact,  of  such  a 
colossal  Divine  failure,  shatter  the  citadel  of  all 
religious  faith.  In  the  light  of  that  vision  of  all 
the  mighty  dead  standing  before  God,  how  dare 
any  man  go  "  dealing  damnation  round  the  land  " 
in  the  name  of  a  petty  dogma,  and  glibly  passing 
sentence  on  the  human  race?  How  blasphemous 
beyond  words!  No,  no.  Let  us  not  turn  pessi- 
mists and  despair  of  the  overwhelming  majority 
of  our  humanity  with  one  scheme,  nor  rush  them 
all  into  heaven  with  another.  It  is  enough  to  have 
the  veil  lifted  and  behold  them  standing  before 
God. 

Surely  all  must  see  how  vital  it  is,  how  necessary 
alike  to  our  faith  and  sanity,  that  we  have  a  noble 
vision  of  God,  before  whom  not  only  the  dead  of 


174  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

ages  past,  but  our  own  dear,  pitiful,  august  dead, 
must  stand.  Nature  teaches  us  much  about  the 
law  and  power  and  majesty  of  God.  History, 
now  immeasurably  extended  by  evolution,  dis- 
closes yet  deeper  and  more  precious  things,  reveal- 
ing His  crusade  for  righteousness  and  His  labor 
working  toward  a  higher  type  of  humanity.  But 
these  do  not  satisfy  when  we  see,  as  in  this  vision, 
that  white  and  silent  assembly  of  all  the  dead  be- 
fore His  throne.  Here,  in  this  high  court  of  the 
dead,  let  us  make  trial,  not  of  the  dead,  but  of  our 
ideas  of  Him  in  whose  presence  they  stand.  Take 
any  of  the  modern  notions  of  God,  put  forth  with 
such  smart  logic,  and  test  it  in  this  light  and  you 
will  see  how  thin  and  pale  it  is,  how  inadequate  to 
the  demands  of  humanity,  how  deaf  to  the  most 
pathetic  and  moving  of  all  cries  that  ascend  from 
this  shadowed  earth  to  the  shadowless  heavens. 

For  example,  let  us  read  the  text  as  Spencer 
would  translate  it :  "  And  I  saw  the  dead,  small 
and  great,  stand  before  an  Infinite  and  Eternal 
Energy  from  which  all  things  proceed."  Whose 
heart  does  not  turn  sick  and  sink  within  him  to 
think  of  all  the  suffering,  sinning,  aspiring,  pa- 
thetic humanity  in  the  grasp  of  mere  impersonal 
Energy,  as  if  caught  and  crushed  in  a  vast  machine? 
Or  let  Bergson  give  his  version  of  the  text:  "  And 
I  saw  the  dead,  small  and  great,  stand  before  a 
Vital  Urge,"  a  blundering  life  force  groping  its 
way  in  the  dark,  running  into  blind  alleys  —  hu- 


THE  VISION  OF  THE  DEAD         175 

manity  itself  largely  an  experiment,  if  not  a  mis- 
take !  Who  can  hold  that  dogma  against  the  pro- 
testing cry  of  helpless  innocence  and  the  infinite 
misery  wrought  by  its  blind  and  fumbling  God? 
Let  Matthew  Arnold  render  the  text :  "  And  I 
saw  the  dead,  small  and  great,  stand  before  a 
stream  of  tendency,  a  power  not  ourselves  that 
makes  for  righteousness."  That  is  a  little  better, 
in  that  it  adds  to  mere  power  a  gleam  of  conscience, 
a  dim  prophecy  of  moral  responsibility,  a  faint 
hope  that  right  will  somewhere  rule  at  last.  But 
not  one  of  these  guesses  measures  up  to  the  prob- 
lem. How  dare  we  bring  a  mere  hypothesis,  or  an 
arid  rationalism,  to  the  judgment  of  all  the  dead? 
Happily  our  Christian  seer,  whose  far-shining 
vision  casts  our  groping  guesses  into  shadow, 
brings  to  the  solemn  assize  of  the  dead  not  only  a 
passionate  human  heart,  but  a  grand  revelation  of 
God.  Only  when  we  know  the  ineffable  father- 
hood of  God,  as  unveiled  in  the  life  and  spirit  and 
living  presence  of  Christ,  do  we  have  a  vision  of 
God  equal  to  this  vision  of  the  dead.  Ah,  when 
we  see  that  God  is  like  Christ,  there  is  light  all 
round  the  sky,  transfiguring  all  our  mortal  life 
from  the  cradle  to  the  tomb  —  and  beyond! 
Then  the  wild  fondness  of  the  suffering  mother- 
hood of  the  world,  with  its  cry  after  lost  little  ones 
since  ever  the  Pyramids  were  built,  finds  response 
in  the  words,  "  Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto 
Me,  for  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven."     Then 


176  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

the  piteous  moral  failure  of  humanity,  so  tragic  in 
its  weakness,  so  staggering  in  its  aggregate,  is  in 
the  hands  of  One  who  knows  all,  as  no  mortal  can 
know  it,  who  remembers  that  we  are  dust,  and  who 
knows  how  to  be  merciful  and  just.  He  who 
taught  us  to  forgive  until  seventy  times  seven,  will 
not  forget  the  possibilities  of  growth  in  His  poor- 
est human  child,  nor  will  His  love  let  go  of  the 
most  far-wandering  soul  made  in  His  image.  The 
dead  are  in  the  hands  of  God  whom  Jesus  made 
known,  and  there  we  may  leave  them,  knowing 
that  we  shall  soon  stand  in  that  company  to  be 
judged  according  to  the  deeds  done  in  the  body. 

Retribution  there  is;  retribution  there  will  be, 
here  and  hereafter;  but  if  it  is  Divine  it  is  neither 
vindictive  nor  hopeless.  The  judgments  of  eter- 
nal love  are  not  the  judgments  of  doom,  but 
of  redemption,  as  our  nobler  human  judgment 
comes  more  and  more  to  be.  He  who  made  us  for 
Himself  knows  that  unrighteousness  is  our  woe, 
here  and  everywhere,  and  that  righteousness  is  our 
infinite  joy.  H  we  cannot  forecast  the  ultimate 
issue,  we  can  at  least  be  sure  that  a  redemptive  in- 
tention is  at  the  heart  of  all  the  moral  pain  of 
humanity,  and  as  surely  affirm  that  the  infinite  pain 
that  throbs  in  the  heart  of  our  race  will  never  cease 
until  that  heart  is  pure.  Of  all  the  mysteries 
amidst  which  we  are  encamped  in  this  "  isthmus 
of  a  middle  state  "  none  is  so  strange,  so  inexplic- 
able, as  that  of  pain,  which  increases  in  intensity, 


THE  VISION  OF  THE  DEAD         177 

as  the  saints  tell  us,  the  nearer  we  come  to  God. 
Nor  does  it  cease  until  we  attain  to  the  heavenly- 
death  —  that  death,  that  is,  of  all  that  is  unheav- 
enly  within  us  —  when  it  is  lost  in  that  joy  which 
all  the  world  is  seeking,  but  which  so  few  have 
found  upon  earth. 

Such  a  vision  of  the  dead  fills  one  with  awe  un- 
utterable, and  it  well  may  hush  our  petty  debates 
about  the  fate  of  that  host  assembled  before  God. 
If  any  one  insists  upon  a  literal  and  austere  read- 
ing of  the  Book  of  Vision,  let  him  not  crucify  hu- 
manity on  a  few  texts,  but  begin  at  home  and  make 
trial  of  his  exegesis  on  those  nearest  to  his  heart. 
The  Judgment  Parables  of  Jesus  should  be  read  by 
a  father,  with  his  family  gathered  about  his  knee, 
and  in  that  scene,  with  its  tenderness  and  beauty, 
he  will  best  understand  the  infinite  Father  at  whose 
feet  all  will  assemble  at  last.  In  those  parables 
it  is  not  penitence,  but  a  beautiful,  unconscious 
possession  of  moral  worth  and  the  spirit  of  serv- 
ice, that  is  the  basis  of  high  reward.  Nothing 
is  said  about  belief,  about  belonging  to  a  church, 
but  only  about  deeds  that  find  their  fruit  in  char- 
acter and  a  faithful  pilgrimage  in  "  the  Road  of 
the  Loving  Heart."  Those  who  are  most  sure 
that  they  are  worthy  to  stand  in  that  awful  hour 
learn  that  they  are  the  most  unfit,  while  others 
whom  they  had  deemed  outcasts  receive  blessing. 
It  was  not  Nero,  but  St.  Paul,  who  felt  himself 
most  unworthy,  as  all  the  saints  have  confessed  in 


178  THE  MERCY  OF  HELL 

their  sweet  and  wise  humility,  trusting  only  in  the 
infinite  mercy  of  God,  as  we  must  do  here  and 
always. 

Above  all,  let  us  not  be  guilty  of  the  unspeakable 
vanity  of  claiming  for  ourselves  what  we  think  is 
too  good  for  all  our  humanity,  lest  we  be  found 
less  worthy  than  the  least.  Let  us  dare  to  trust 
the  highest  hope  our  hearts  can  dream,  and  stand 
by  it,  without  dogmatism  and  without  doubt,  the 
while  we  join  with  Faber  in  his  hymn  — 

"  There's  a  wideness  in  God's  mercy, 
Like  the  wideness  of  the  sea; 
There's  a  kindness  in  His  justice, 
Which  is  more  than  liberty. 

"  For  the  love  of  God  is  broader 

Than  the  measure  of  man's  mind ; 
And  the  heart  of  the  Eternal 
Is  most  wonderfully  kind." 


THE   END 


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